Sometimes

You need to sleep.

You need to sleep a lot.

Not because you’re tired

Or because you need to escape,

But to rest your soul from your feelings

And your heart from emotion

Because everything

And everyone

Past

Present

And future

Will not hesitate

To devour you

Completely.

Sometimes, all you can do

Is go to sleep

And wait for the storm in your chest

To pass.

As the colors come back

As the small seedling begins to show its soft green stem,

India wraps itself in saffron

And Pakistan their deep green

Kashmir, as is customary,

Soaks in blood

Blood of the past

And the future

Of all things in between

Of those conceived

And those not yet,

The direct cause and effect

Of simply existing

In the wrong place

At the wrong time.

They say

Machines have no soul.

But aren’t humans kind of a machine too?

Vessels of flesh and blood.

Although its true that

These machines are shapeshifting beasts

Both a lie

And a lesson.

We say machines have no souls.

But humans are machines too.

Machines are created to function.

And to keep itself functioning.

We say humans have souls,

But it seems

Our ends are nearly always self-made.

As if a mouse had created a mousetrap.

Or a fly a spiderweb.

We say humans are machines

And machines have no soul

And I think we are right.

A never-ending cycle
Eternity, Forever, Infinity.
As the serpent eats itself,
And the golden retrievers at the beach
Who chase their own tails
As the frolic in the surf.

No beginning, no ending.
My eyes,
Deep like the abyss.
Yet also holding fire–
This is not who I am,
But I cannot remember who I should be.

Looking up,
Through the city lights.
I do not understand beyond those lights.
I know it is mostly void
A little bit stars,
And I look back at my reflection.
I do not understand much,
And the sky reminds me I don’t understand even more.

One last time.

Gaze into the abyss of my mirror,
Only to realize
I don’t see me.

We were walking home,
And you were crying.
And sobbing.
And bawling.
All over my shoulder.

You begged me to help save you,
Told me you needed to be saved,
But all I could think was:
“I’ve got to run.
I have to run so fast
And get away from all this.”

I must admit,
At times like these, I doubt that I am human

It forces me to accept that
I am completely alien
And I miss being human.
I miss it so much.
I miss it more than anything in this godforsaken universe.

So after you’re done crying on my shoulder,
And you realize I have nothing to offer.
You will understand that you didn’t need me after all.

Throughout my meaningless existence,
I thought that I didn’t need anyone.
But now I realize
That no one needed me.

She is like the moon.

Beautiful and intelligent,

All soft smiles and gentle laughter.

You can yell at her, and she’ll sit still.

And she will love you even after you’re done.

When you’re in front of her, you love her and you feel loved.

Like feeling both sides of the sun at the same time.

She is like the moon, yes, but a shadowed reflection.

Beneath her facade of upturned lips

Lies a raging ocean, threatening to pull you down.

When you know her, really know her,

You’ll feel like the Sun eclipsed,

Suffocated

Choked.

She’s a liar

And a cheat

And it is true, certainly, that I am the moon.

Because you will only ever see one part of me.

It slips out of my mouth easily.

Pushes past my lips with little protest

And I almost forget the weight the words carry.

Easy as they go,

It’s hard to remember that

It

Hurts

When the silence that follows

Is louder than confession itself.

Or when memories start to fade like old photographs

And I’m left clutching the echoes of laughter

And the dust of words that used to mean more than an apology.

If you breathe my soul,
It is stained with guilt.
Disgusting with regret,
And it carries a sickening stench of memories that haunt me.

If I smell your gun,
Even through this pixelated screen,
Will I smell your blood or mine?
Will it have your past,
Or my future?

My face and yours begin to blur together.
And I stare into the mirror,
And I don’t know what to think,
Because I am staring into a pool of knowledge,
A face of a killer.

I am watching it unfold before me.
These victims
Becoming the assailants.
I am trying to make you understand
I am you.
Just not who you are right now.

That is why
We are twins, you and I.
I am trying to tell you
I do not hate you.
I do not hate any of you.
I am just trying, trying to make you understand
That the numerous times you’ve fired your AK-47s
And M-19s,
And whatever other guns you own,
They have rendered you deaf,
And the dust has made you blind.

The smoke warps my facial features,
And they mix with yours.
My eyes become just a little bit wider.
My skin is just a little bit darker.

Would you please just stop shooting for a moment?
Would you?

You are always forgetting
That I am your future
And your past.
Killing me
Means killing you.

a short story
***
I walk the rubble in my sneakers.
The ash in the air is suffocating, and tears form in the red rims of my eyes from the smoke. The remnants of life lay strewn like forgotten bones beneath a dark sky choked with dust. The sun in this reality is absent, and my eyelids are heavy as I follow a vague flicker of light in the distance. Every step I take echoes a hollow rhythm, a reminder of the absence that replaces the thrum of existence.

Some things I find are indisputable:
The future is called anxiety.
The past is called regret.
The present, however. It is different. The present is nonexistent within this realm of existence, this apocalypse. Dust coats the present, and I can no longer shape the future as I used to. 
It controls me.
Anchors me to my handcrafted reality.
Imprisons me within my creativity.
The broken keyboard makes meaningless stains.
Wet lines are soaked up by the paste of dead cells.

And so I walk this desolate street with no hope of future, past, or anything. 

Finally, the tendrils of my hair illuminate beneath the sickly yellow glow. 
It must be this one.
The last streetlight to withstand the test of time. The last yet to be replaced by the nauseating blue-green of the future.
I can see the rust creeping over it’s surface, a mirror of my own decay, as if it too had accepted the inevitability of its collapse.

Some things I find I used to miss:
The satisfaction of control.
The direct cause and effect of pressing pen to paper.
The pride in my achievements.
The responsibility for my mistakes.
Calm; breathe.
I breathe the weight of it all.

I feel a strange kinship with this small, bilious light. We both seem to have lost the will to cling to an existence of which the world has long since turned its back. We are resigned to our slow fade into oblivion. And so I linger beneath its dim glow, hoping still that maybe in our collapse we will both finally be free.

The buzz of the school day returns, and I am snapped back into the present, however finite it stays. The streetlight flickers still, but I am forced to move past it. I turn back momentarily, however, to stare at its suffocating gasps against the brightness of the world around it.

These children pass by this neverlasting streetlight, unbeknownst to its infinite power, too focused on dreams of the uncertain future.

That’s why
I must learn to relinquish it all.
The weight of responsibility, the pride, the control.
Calm; breathe.
The world in my hands.
And the one in my dreams.
So I can fly and chase mine
Or be happy
watching everyone else fly
without me.

I take my last fleeting look at the streetlight.
Calm; breathing air of the present but living in the past.
The light flickers.
I flicker back.