100% Cotton Top Sheet. I find top sheets unbearable, unnecessary even. This is not a newly developed stubbornness. As a child, I would undo the bed my mother had carefully made that morning, kicking the sheet loose with my feet, slip between the duvet, and turn onto my side to find the familiar lump beside my pillow. It became my ritual. Years passed and my aversion only hardened. When I reached the age where I could decide such things for myself, I did. I took my newfound freedom and vowed never to put a top sheet on my bed again. Still, it followed me. Every comforter set arrived with that same thin rectangle of cotton, a constant reminder of wasted labor.

I began seeing someone who noticed its absence the first night. We argued about it with the kind of intensity that only exists when two people are close enough to care. Passion followed passion, kissing goodnight and turning . Though my opinion hadn’t changed, my behavior did. On nights I knew they were coming, I laid the sheet neatly under the duvet, folding the covers inward like my mother did. I began softening to its functionality. When one of us overheated but still wanted contact, we would slip between layers, rearranging positions to where our bodies never fully separated. We were displaced just enough, different axises on the same plane.

Eventually, the sheet stayed even on nights they weren’t coming. I like to believe it understood that I needed time to adjust. The night they left for the last time was cold in a way that felt intentional. I could have pushed the sheet away again, reclaiming my space. Instead, I slid beneath it, letting it rest over me, heavy with consolation. But my arms felt wrong, uncertain of their purpose. They had learned another body, tracing hair absentmindedly with the left and resting the right across a lower spine. I reached for a pillow, choosing one with awkward lumps that vaguely shaped presence, and held it close as I fell asleep, practicing for how to sleep alone again.

A Note from One Over. I had just moved into what would become the family home. Arrogant to no fault, I was aware of who I was. Young, too young, and attractive with an unguarded innocence that evoked a slight perversion in men who had found themselves lucky enough to witness it. Standing on the balcony, breathing in the unfamiliar air, I looked and saw a man leaning into the familiarity of the same air he smoked. He noticed me watching, breaking the silence with a wave. He waved once and it was enough. Something in me crossed for yet I did not have language for. I understood instinctively that to reveal this feeling, this weakness, to him, would ruin it. So I hid behind blushes and small, careful waves, convincing myself he could not see through me. My balcony faced our neighbors across the way. Beneath hers, one floor down, was his. Quietly witnessing our suspended flirtation from her kitchen, she regaled my mother of our expressive flirtation. Fortunately, this was not enough for him, evolving into folded notes meant only for me, sent upward through her balcony. We would read them together, girls and women alike, laughing softly through consequence. I was completely taken, entangled by the intimacy of being seen without touch.

We never met nor did I learn his name until the day the notes stopped. A vanished presence on the balcony from one over. Days later, walking home from school with my mother, we passed a small gathering outside our building. People standing close together, praying and grieving an unfamiliar name. Innocence taken shortly after, we learned his name and expiry. Assassinated in the transparency of day on his walk home back to me.

He ceased to exist, his notes my only remembrance second to the memory of his wave.

Death on Dawely. What is an experience if not a poem unwritten, prose reenacted? Your silence that night left me no choice but to experience. The flickering lamppost beside us burned off-key, its light strained and unreliable, as if the responsibility of divinity were too heavy for it to bear. No cars passed us, no life moved among us, no time seemed to claim us. When I looked up, no stars dared to emerge as witnesses to what was unfolding. Blank, the night dimmed at the strike of our words. Only the moon remained unaffected; no man, friend, or foe could halt her arrival. She was the sole spectator of my death; she was beautiful. Yet of all the details that besieged me, none rivaled the detail of you. The unraveling of poems and prose that was your figure standing above me. Granted a final mercy, I chose to hold you, to rest my palms along your waist in bolted tether. I kissed the hand of the thief and lingered in prose once more.

Performance. I find myself exhausted to perform.

Not in the grand sense of overt drama or anticipated applause of an audience, but in the persistent act of existing outside my own mind. To wake up each morning feels like stepping onto a stage with no script. The tasks are ordinary yet carry the weight of something ancient as if mundanity itself was punishment sentenced at birth. It feels cruel to live in bifurcate, with one self held privately and another carefully curated for the public. In effort, the distance narrows.

Performance is to truth what truth is to indulgence.

N. A bed of hair manes itself into hued curls of fictitious length, framing a darkened gaze that hazes and lures. A nose arches into a valley of martyrs, lips still bleeding with youth that soften into a subtle hum when pleased. Beneath it all, a heart pumps life into her beloved, held within a silhouette that forces innocent onlookers to kneel. Her tense neck, dainty wrists, and warm fingers each adorned with the finest gold, move with intention. She thinks in allegories and walks with a gracious, tiptoed stomp. And in a desert vast and wide, where hills of sand stretch for miles, she commands attention: a mirage that sends travelers sprinting toward her embrace, quenching the thirst of the lost. Imagine her, an unfathomable beauty reserved for herself alone, and tremble at your inability to claim her as your own.

04.04.xx. The love I hold for you is my act of self-love. Through your satisfaction comes my comfort. Comfort like a freshly poured cup of tea to reward myself after a procrastinated task. Comfort like the rare embrace of a father’s arms. Comfort like the shared fruit between friends. I find it ironic that love has the ability to transcend our tangible reality, seamlessly maneuvering through realms as it pleases. My love has reached heights surpassing projection, metamorphosing into an inward expression of self. I carry your burden as mine, allowing the weight of your experiences to anchor. When did you become my beginning and end? For now I look in the mirror and see “we”, not “i.” We are one and none. A collage of flesh, force, and fate. Allow me to nurse myself through the deliberate care of you. For the love I hold for you is my act of self-love. Allow me to love me through you.