you grow on me, algae on flooded ground mushrooms on wet firewood smothering— dark clouds in my lungs a flame mirrored you grow on me, slightly cancerous ...Read more

As the house grows emptier, I have more room to breathe—maybe more than my lungs know to deal with. Crickets and lizards step into my stoic skies. Electricity hums through the wiring behind the walls, like Fairuz playing at the neighbours. This sultry silence, in all its breathing, drapes itself ove...Read more

This woman bit her nails off We fondled her hair as she pared her calluses with size 15 blade hovering at forearms former intimacies Every day the flour kept count of the growing depletion of keratin freshly kneaded dough convulses at the tensing pressure on her peeled, cut tips She is taught by...Read more

do you take my obsession for romance i’m merely the cigarette you light with friends in the shadows of ignition a shared lighter— a breath half stolen, half shared confessions dancing at your lips i wait for you to slip i reflect your hiding spots— pristine, make you cough them out— in bouts i’m the...Read more

i keep circling back to u same entries same glances same window a voyeur in the making you pull the curtains wide is that an invite you dress up ur inner world to strip it naked a ritual i return to hungry no matter what delicacy is served i’m onto ur leftovers the drafts u forego and still i ...Read more

a flashback keeps knocking my knees unsteady age five, a ride to the city outskirts nothing standing by a shop an alley too steep, a leap of trust “i will buy you candy, don’t cry puffs” nothing i’m on the terrace, railing too high to jump, fall, or slip he is mingling, the oldest golden child i...Read more

walk with me, maama there, behind their backs, you and i could be free i can bring a sky-lifting palette will you paint the walls beyond white? the bills can be mine, time all yours i may never stop your hair from greying or the affable fine lines i insist you, my sweet honey take this new road, ...Read more

i may be myopic, cloud-eyed, partially blind. i may be invisible—sight surpassing sharp eyes except a few, who bid me bet on success as if it has already knocked on their doors. they write me in braille of all the awesomeness i ooze, speak loud and soft quintessential i-love-yous. i nitpick compl...Read more

as a thousand touches linger ghostly one fidgets, forgetting each masquerading as friends, lovers, family most striking like rains of winter fall like air has worn disease still i reach, persistent an ant to sugar me to the mug pitter-pattering brewery waited upon like rains of summers out by the...Read more

o’ writer how does it feel to hear your words from lips foreign to yours, for a tongue new to the taste of you— at your parapel eerie coos— words loud and clear wafted through sealed windows, with your ear to the wall— so do you hear at all ? o’ writer in there, in...Read more

so this is how being nude before vultures feels— film dripping from wounds anew, plasma, saliva—thumps and chews; from whom to who, onto whose lips does the flesh land first, do the yelps land a few? the hungry, the emancipates— all here, all watching. for whom? on whose toppling tray? it’s always ...Read more

Soon you will turn into a memory no longer longed for. Soon your phone numbers will out-lease my mind. Soon your face will blur, flushed down the path of historic artistry. And soon, I will be freer than you once claimed you had to be. Soon these letter-snippets, these pocketed dreams, will follow ...Read more

i question limbically if all the ugly one day collaborates with unease will the world make sense then? will the see-through malmal of a sweaty labourer hide the foreseen? will we all hang like branches falling off a tree too heavy. only if i owned one more felis, a cat, most likely i bet be ridden ...Read more

Everytime that my body aches to be near yours to bathe in our naked truth beyond the veil of a jury's stage I grab that ragged old towel of mine, that soft blue towel oversized, standing under the shower just to dry and piece memories alive. Your fragrance hits the pheromonal fest. As I dab this w...Read more

The cigarette burned slower today like even it didn’t want to rush into the dark. The blue lagoon numbed my hand, but I was sweating hard. The cough grew stronger, each pull swifter, each drag strangely benevolent. The sinus filled up. What’s left to breathe but foggy twirls rising from ashes ben...Read more