international women’s day, every day

happy international women's day

to the nurturing women

who raise men, to the

ambitious women who get

their dollars in the face

of unequal pay, to the

sexually liberated women

who [redacted] in

a shame culture, to the

alpha women who have to be

louder than everyone else

to kill off soft-spoken

stereotypes,

to the women of color

who live in the gray areas & see beyond

black & white,

to single women who bear children,

to women held captive somewhere or to someone,

to women who are still girls,

and to women who are becoming.

the somber sun

the sun leaves me by my lonely
way too early now
and my mornings start too late.
There’s something a little anxiety-provoking
in abandoning the comfort of my warm blankets
and stepping out into a world so cold.
I feel as though I am running out of time,
while simultaneously wasting it.
So I chase the sun as the darkness chases me,
rushing to get home before 6pm.
And within minutes,
I can’t tell if its still midday or if its midnight;
it all looks the same.
the stillness of the cold awakens something inside of me,
something so set in a sea of disturbances,
and I remain fixated on anything but the peace it portrays.
my therapist used to call it “seasonal depression”
but i don’t like to call it anything.
The time constraints make it sound too exclusive,
regardless of how temporary the weather can be
& how permanent depression may seem.
and although the clock has been set back,
my hour isn’t spent any different now than before.
Besides, the cyclical nature of time is only inevitable.
and so,
I feel it creeping in again at sunset—
this tendency to find refuge in numbness.
In the midst of it all, I try to remind myself
of the birds that still sing as they migrate south,
even though their trajectories have been flipped
and that I am not who I was all those years ago.
I cannot allow the wind to sway me back
into wearing a sweater I outgrew.
“seasons change”
as do I.

big cities, little grammar

I love to travel because a part of me loves
discovering different energies in different spaces,
sometimes only to learn about the lack thereof.
as someone who’s been everywhere [cue Johnny Cash],
let me tell you a little something:
colonies and cultures
religions and cults,
they all start from somewhere.
one person and another,
collectively growing in consciousness.
and despite our differences
the unity of grouping results in the same medium of expression.
and it’s art.

there’s art in the body you’re in, and there’s art in another continent.
because we all have music, and we’re made to hear
it's just the metaphysical sense of energies vibrating in various frequencies in certain altitudes of the world to create a tune
for its geographical region or its religious followers
it's the way musicians and politicians are made.

it’s as close yet as distant,
as how much different
you spend your 24 hours
from someone across the world from you
and from your own roommate.