| Kieren |

. Aware of who it was she didnt see in the bathroom mirror, he knows by intuition what horror keeps her company. It’d be a lie dressed to the nines if she were to deny how his insight scared her. He had a tendency to stay quiet as a whisper between overcrowded closets and kitchen sinks with bad...

Somehow I thought I could be different. Intimately aware, I knew you wore 'nihilist' like a sodden crown, nearly green, upon your temples. No veil could dare touch your eyes, you'd boast how the world could not deceive your ready wit and how cruel the whims of an optimist should be to delude unfort...

I have never known love like the earth has shown, how the red dirt yields to mold my shape a home; how the soft touch of ferns accepts a foreigner's hand with little complaint but instead accepts this new plant of greying skin and heavy bones. ...

• • every infraction of the heart unties strings keeping hands apart, each centimetre of surface begs for palms to come together to reflect regret in a psalm her lips try to flush out. may Gaia grant her pleas attention for she tires of housing rage in a penitentiary of rigidity; ...

There's a quiet sense of relief in knowing my love for you has evolved into something new— it no longer swells and dips but pulses steady like an unbothered flame —with no hurried attachments strung along after the three words. • "I love you because you're—" "I l...

• • the victors mold history with voices loud enough for erasure when the narratives that nip at their heels tell a different tale. they've reaped the fruit from the seeds their ancestors sowed yet seek misery in ...

• • the mind shirks what's no longer needed, previously entangled in cobwebs of the past; cursed the condition of a disillusioned daughter; buried the existence and belief of a demiurge, and instead chooses to name itself All....

• • I him, that boy whose lips tasted like custard pies and in the eve stained it with red wine. He took me higher than the stratosphere with words aimed to flush cheeks with sweet heat. ...

• The heart aches for salty winds, the touch of a cool breeze, to line my lungs and keep it there as memorandum for for a home I've yet to see again. The mountains may shift and the sky may part for rain, but...

•─────────•°•─────────• It's been a while, my friends! This humble curator of yours, Kieren, would kindly like to welcome you to the twelfth monthly community poem! Excited to learn what it's about? No need to wait or worry, I'll be explaining the m...

Elevator to the moon, whistling our favorite tune, trying to get a closer view. — Satellite by Guster A mass magnetized towards your gravitation, I can only allow myself to suspend, stretched and allow an embrace from aluminum limbs; ...

Long have I been complicit in the model minority myth. Allowed compliments on my skin, naming me flavourful and exotic, like others, with words like coffee tones and chocolate sweet hues. As if the only way I can be loved is as something to be consu —med; celebrate...