"who taught you shame"

i tremble under this

this weight which sticks my words

to the column of my throat

i point at myself but

then they don't believe

and i don't believe

and i breathe and breathe and breathe

because i don't know i don't know

where did this shame come from

to clog my thoughts with rotten flowers

and to whisper the negativity of

failure and failure and failure that

chokes me and suffocates and i

can't help it that i push and push

my skin through my bones and

i don't know anymore what shame even is

because it is no longer the atmosphere

pressing into my flesh but

it is the intrinsic part of the very atoms

stuck together by some forsaken force of the universe

and i despise despise despise that

i can't break apart

that i can't scatter each electron

back into the stars

where they serve better to illuminate

than to tell me "this is guilt"

and then

then

i will know that shame stings

my lips and pricks

at my eyes

it is a pit of acid in my stomach

and shame becomes me

Melancholy traced identical prisms and fractals into the engulfing carpet and regarded the plain ceiling. they wryly grimaced at the realization that the roof, a barricade between the more heavenly firmament and constellations, was a sturdy and cruel atlas of the journeys they could never embark on, sights playing like films at the back of their eyes.

there is a door and a window and they stretch further away whenever Melancholy tries to approach (but they are not moving and Melancholy knows this and they know this and they cannot separate their heart from their chest but they wish so badly to because at least it will go places they will not).

Melancholy propped their wobbly arms on the ground and hazily swerved their head around the barren, lifeless room where, besides the window and the door and the ceiling, there were only mirrors.

cringing, Melancholy was brutally reminded why they preferred wasting away on the passive, indifferent floor, but now they couldn't look away once their eyes honed into the mirror like a predator and its prey caught in the second before the carnivorous pursuit. Melancholy felt themselves devoured by their own reflection because they could see nothing at all. there was a reflection there, Melancholy sensed that its gaze was burying into them with contempt, but they could not see the person they thought they were.

Melancholy haltingly crawled toward the looking glass directly in front of them to just stare at the apathetic eyes with anchored bruises beneath them. that was all Melancholy could see, and even then those eyes were nebulous and nearly impossible to discern. if someone asked, Melancholy would not be able to answer why their vision was suddenly inundated with blurs, a fog that rolled into the spaces of their overcast peripheral.

they curled into themselves as they crumpled to the ground and caved to the storms snaked around their eyes.

Bliss pried their eyes apart languidly and experienced the comforts of an untidy mattress with a blanket spooled out against the floor more than the bed.

they trekked through the window of an eclectically colored mansion and drifted against the wind with shielded eyes, opening them once more to face confrontation with a dusk bathed desert.

Bliss clutched their bottles of instant gratification and scurried into the depths of the canyons, refulgent with sleepy lights and glimmering, exuberant fairies that trailed their firefly bodies through the ravine to guide Bliss into a deeper chasm that gleamed with the flickering paints of fickle seasons. beyond the colossal obelisks of the forest's entryway stood microcosms of those trees, all beautified with shape-shifting leaves.

they cocooned themselves in the shade of the woods smattered with a myriad of species, some from the known world and others Bliss knew sails beyond the comprehension of populaces who would never see what hides in the space between celestial giants.

vain, with a smirk hooked at the corner of their mouth, Bliss sprinted through the woods in an avid hunt for the one sapling that, through immeasurable time and unforeseen odds, grazed the surface of the crevasse.

they came to an abrupt stop at the edge of the maw and touched their forehead onto the bark, then ascended through branches like quicksilver and practically catapulted through the canopy.

perched on the precipice of the elongated brambles, leagues above the deafening waterfall without a visible end.

without hesitation, they leapt into the falls, breezing through the mists and the bounding water with unseeing eyes.

Bliss basked with the flecks of traveling rivers drizzling onto their face, to which they grinned at in wonderment.

until they heard the jolts of bass before the electricity flowing into their ears.

Bliss dove into a pool of pulsating licks of synthetic sounds with glee stuck on every inch of their skin as they stood amongst a crowd of other entities with the same intent to seek joy in any form available, and Bliss was there to satiate their starving lips. without further suspension, Bliss sauntered through the congregation to lose themselves.

i speak puzzle languages

i used to play solitaire

but sometimes there is no solution

no more moves left

so i moved on to sudoku

every number has its rightful throne

every digit fits neatly and perfectly

and there are no repeats

not a single one

for those who did not know how to play,

that was there failure,

their inability to reimagine the

numerals as monarchs,

the boxes as cells,

and themselves as the rioters

i was going to stay home that day

but going out was a gamble i loved to play

besides,

i always had sudoku

so i stayed at the gathering

asked people what they loved to play

no one said anything

just stood with cloak-covered heads

and chains around their necks

so then i played sudoku

each number has a character

i especially like one and nine

they don't have cloaks or chains

one is a queen who loftily isolates herself

but sews together the stitches of

poverty and calls herself a savior

nine is a king who grants his opponents

the right to die

and brings them hemlock disguised as wine

i locked them away in the center of the puzzle

they shrieked and pleaded with me,

they did not recognize me

one was my friend

nine was my friend, too

but both of them played solitaire

i showed them what it was like to play sudoku

and now they lie in the center,

the rioters' effigy,

and my dearest friends beg for their heads in the well

we play sudoku

and we win

every time.

when music is played, the music is not made of notes

but the spaces between them

a resonance gone unmarked, reverberations felt impermanently

space is not made of empty dark blues

it is made of the spaces between stars when you look at them

you are not grateful for the light you see, you are grateful for the space between them

a painting isn't made of colors

it is made of the space between one color and another

we measure beauty on the notion of emptiness between parts

if these are all true,

how foolish are we to believe

we are anything but the spaces between us

my womb is smothered in the virgin mary’s despair

there are no miracles marked by maternity, muddled and morphed by my mutiny

there used to be a calla lily and a hyacinth living in my belly

the former envied by the goddess, the latter revered by the god

both too beautiful for the body begotten by breath alone

no mother made me, no father wanted me

both discarded the person i aspired to be

so i lived simplistically and formlessly

but the gods believed in form and order

and i was a reckless thrill-seeker

so the gods invited me to poker and dealt me a bad hand

i played the fool and pretended i was there to lose

and i lost, grinning, foolhardy

then they called me a woman

they did not force upon me a role or a cloth

they did not force me to walk on my knees or pick the callouses off of my feet

they simply told me what i was

and everyone believed them

slice me open and you will discover that venus marked me for death

flay me and you will search for the remnants of the recklessness, the outcry, the revolution

and find your palms smothered in bright pink bloodstains, perfectly perfumed

bring me back, i shrieked, louder than the Furies, louder than the Sirens

but where had i come from?: this, said mockingly,

the world has not changed

and you have not come from anywhere but yourself

perhaps, they say, you were the one who was misaligned all along

no one would have believed you in the first place

you believed yourself to be in a world that would not take your body and deface it

i was no one’s opposition

yet, you have cast me in a position

that forces those eyes to trace my silhouette

in terms of a binary