If we could be kinder to ourselves, would we be closer to a better ending? As I read the following poems from a younger version of myself, I swallow my unkind words and judgments. I want to be kinder. The following poems are not edited extensively, and instead, I prefer to give them to you as a snack, not to fulfill or show a representation of who I am as a writer, or even who I once was, but what I once wrote when I was young and stupid and in love with maybes.

If only fish could die

Sometimes I lose
words. I mourn the thought
my feelings are not
expressed the way they are
meant to.

Two tongues and some
are just out of my reach.
Nobody warns you
how much harder it is to tell
than to read.

Sometimes I lose because I mourn
the connections that fled away,
the touch that is not even a memory.
the emotions that stayed
on my mouth like a residue.

Sometimes I mourn
words, because I think
in language, but I can’t name it.
I can’t paint it.
I can’t share it.

Rest in peace, all the “could have beens”
that are now lost in translation.

I am also lost in translation.
with the unholy intention
to let my pain flee out of my veins
and into ink on paper
overflowing the rivers until fish die
so I can mourn them instead of myself.

Price at your discretion

A score is pending on my value.
Cutting-edge research of devotion.
Due date won’t do it.
Will I do it?

I want my feelings graded,
maybe that way I can finally fall asleep knowing
what you know.

The objectively simple digits by a critic’s wonderland.
The numbers that get closer as hands on my throat.
No air, no sound other than the rising volume of my thoughts,
judging my existence
that will not cease,
until I know.

Give me pain and I’ll give you back nonsense in prose.
They say that interest is high when the heartbeat is low.
My pulse is nearly dead,
and I’m not succeeding at this yet.
And so I flip a coin and share a dare.
At last, am I at sale?

Tears and dimples rising
clouded with shame.
Did I speak out of turn?
I just don’t know.
But if you tell me,
grade me,
price me,
I will be certain next time.

911

Opening: Hello
Next phrase. Next wound. Close up.

Operation done, and my heart is still lying wide on the table.
Visions of future heartbreaks my ancestors laugh over.

My children wonder if they ever existed. Time collapses
through the maze of romantic hallways

in hospitals that unite and create me.
And my sanity is questioned, not more than my belief

in you. My love, I am writing this right now
I have never even met you. And still

sweetness from Monday to Sunday.
because of the constant thought of you

in my mind, the place where you have never looked
more precious.

Shut me up, future me
by proving I was not silly enough to believe in fantasy

and delight me with something other than fake memories.
I beg you, I urge you

Don’t make me just an illusion of how things unfolded
when I was young and stupid and in love with maybes.

Dawn

I

If I fall asleep in my living room
no one is going to wake me.
I will stay put with a backache
and clothes marks on my skin,
untouched and unseen
by no one but the electricity bill
counting every second for leaving
the lights on.
Maybe a fruit mosquito in the absence
of doing the dishes
and when my confusion arises in the morning,
I will wake up in my living room
no one is going to wake me.

II

How much do you love yourself at dawn?

Enough to clean up my face and apply moisturizer before I go to bed.
(Even if I am somewhere where I don't usually put my head)

Enough not to want pimples in the morning.
(Perhaps it’s my vanity using me as a puppet)

Enough to take off my bra and put on a sweater.
(Perhaps it’s comfort speaking)

Enough to set five alarms for the next day.
(And still, oversleep)

After all, what is love if it’s not all of those things?

III

It happened again.

I feel it. The judging gaze of the spider outside my window
wondering why the hell am I sleeping on the couch.

Did I had a tough breakup?
Or was I just sad and unemployed,
Or perhaps a traveller, crashing at a friend’s?

It’s inevitable. Within the ten seconds it takes me to resurrect unexpectedly, turn off the living room lights, and carry myself to my bedroom, the spider will fall and die. The rain was not meant for either of us.

But I got a room and a coach, and a coach that feels like a room. The freezing beauty in loneliness will welcome my stay, in my new room in my brand new world, where no one, not even the spider’s ghost, is going to wake me.