Kash Baloch — Poetry on Identity, Love, and Survival

And he makes me want to carve myself. Starving from extended winter, I beckon to you with a finger. Trembling; my veins fill with splinters. Wooden slivers cut me from the inside, I race towards any assistance. Pressed, I pray for brooding brilliance. Why do you play my ribs like piano keys. Signal to you with smoky urgency, peer into your zippered soul, through magnifying glass eyes, I catch you in action. Hinting at the secret; the secret code to my hunter heart. You can access its emotion. But do not tell the others. Capture me in your net, I beach myself on your bed. You become the shore, I slap at you lazily, like ocean. Flowing, we crash into one another. Resonate within me like cymbals. I vibrate—cut me in two million pieces. I win with my hands down. Hold me in your clammy palm, then blow me away, like dust  & glitter. Just let me scatter. I yearn to know all the places! No longer a mortar fortress. Refined by this scandalous resilien...

Everything is changing, coming to an end, yesterday we were lovers, today we’re hardly friends. From familiar to strangers, in less than a night, don’t say you love me anymore, it doesn’t feel right. Falling to pieces, like shrapnel from the sky, I have used up all my resources, my tears have run dry. Take all that you can and go, just leave my side, as long as you always know, love is stronger than pride. I am not so weak that I won’t survive, this is not the first time I’ve had to stay alive, no, it’s not the first day of my life, I have felt the worst pain, love’s a knife Throwing out the pictures I still have of you, setting fire to the letters that only make me blue, letting go seems like the only reasonable thing to do, I cannot keep pretending that I haven’t got a clue.

The fire burning inside me  had started to subside, caught up in memories of a love  you were unable to provide.  The light in my eyes flickered,  and went out without a fight, causing me to self-destruct;  how do I survive devoid of sight?  My blackened heart refuses  to pick up and resume.  The guilt you've burdened  me with  continues to consume  the remnants of my sanity,  refused to spare my dignity.  Swallowed in a sea of pity,  taught a lesson in humility.  Many years had passed;  assumed I had regained control; seemed like it'd been so long  since I'd been granted parole.  Not a promise, or a lesson;  just a disdainful release.  Content for the longest time,  I thought I was at peace.  Yet, you've returned, once again,  to wreak havoc on my soul.  Falling apart, scattered in pieces.  Broken again, love has paid its toll on my...