An Insider’s Manual To Survival   

You count your breaths   
afraid to draw in for too long.  
This energy is too sacred,  
one wrong move and you’re   
buried inside your own body.  
There must be a name for a body   
that sacrifices itself to survive−  
a snake eating its own tail.  
So you bend your knees into submission,  
you stop your hands from reaching too far,  
you deny your back the right to stretch−   
there is too much to lose in every breath.   
To not call upon your body’s rage,   
you gather everything you are   
and salvage it for a future that may never come.  
You can’t give up everything for today,  
while tomorrow still breathes down your neck.  




Everything The World Owes Me   

They said:   
don’t go around saying the world owes you a living,  
it was here first.  

Then  
it should have swallowed back every grain of sand   
when I came into it.  
It should have reabsorbed  
every drop of water in the oceans.  
It should have cut down its trees   
or burned them down to the roots.  
It should have unpainted the skies and  
left them empty and wanting.  
It should have done everything in its power  
to let me know   
I am unwelcome here.  

It shouldn’t have given me things and people to love.  
It shouldn’t have let me belong to anything in it.  

The world owes me a living and belonging,   
because when I slipped into it,   
covered in blood,   
its warm air wrapped itself around me   
and whispered: 
welcome home.  

I Want To Write Poems About Other Things  

describe the eyes of everyone I love   
and my favourite things about them.  
I want to write about the tenderness of being human,  
how the sky in all its stages pulls my spirit into the light.  
I want to write about all the fictional people I’ve grown to love,   
describe each K-drama character  
and tell you what about them melts me from the inside.   
I want to fill each page with every single encounter that reminds me of   
what it means to live without a noose around my neck.  

But when I put pen to paper,  
the eyes of everyone I love disappear.  
The voices remind me of how I make a living by writing about people 
who describe to me exactly the way they come undone   
and everything they have lost.  
The news reminds me that I am a piece of wood in a burning world   
and I am just a step away from becoming ashes.  
The voices remind me of yet another hospital visit   
and once again, I find everything I am  
flushing itself into the void of a hospital  
and I am again reminded that everything I am could be taken away   
If I let this sickness consume me. 

Someone told me I have lost a lot to this pain 
but I have not lost the thing that makes me whole.  
That I can still tell a joke while breaking a bone   
and find my way up the highest mountain.  
That when they saw pictures of my past  
they saw me as I am now.  
That I haven’t lost the things that matter.  
But I am not sure if I still belong to what was  
and my limbs are bruised and tired from the climb.  
My lips do not have the privilege to stay upturned for too long.  
Is an image mine if it belongs to everyone else but me?  

They say we should write about the good times,  
but my pages have been filled with all the things that forced me to become.  
I want to write about the good times,  
but which safe space will I run to  
when my journal is burning  
with everything the world tries  
to force me into being?  
I write poems that break me   
so I can stay whole.  
Because when I am not listening to the voices    
I rest every single time a kind hand reaches me from the other side.  
I take a walk outside and fill my gallery with sky pictures  
and all the things that moved me   
hoping they can hold me on days the world cannot afford to hold me.  
I let my friends roast me back into existence   
a simple prayer bringing me back into life  
and I remember I do not have to write about the good times   
to prove that I exist in their bosom.