god, i am here in your myth with my story;

mine is a paper boat tossed across the

whirlwind. i am everything that slurs 

in a twiddle of images, a dimming light

placed on the window & in a dark night. 

yester-night, a songbird sings to me about

 survival, but not the melancholia it

could randomize into. i bundle myself

into a blanket in search of the joy in 

loneliness. joy comes knocking, says my 

eeriness crushes rainbows. i open my

mouth to swallow tomorrow. I, too, know

that nothing breaks the heart than a journey

into memory. but how do I undo this trance?

how do i forget the day my brother rejected

his favorite meal to shape-shift into a desert wind? 

i want to switch out of this absence—of everything. 

i want to play songs without running my fingers 

across the sadness in the lyrics. in my room, 

there's a forgotten bookshelf of Rumi's poetry, 

I want to flip their pages & watch  the mischief 

of my ruin blush. i want to stand before

a mirror;  not cracking, not breaking. 

god, when people ask why I write sad poems,

make them fall in love, sleep in its abundance

& wake up clutched in its abyss;

make them feel the cheerfulness of half things.