I’ve been trying this new thing where I just write without hesitation and much deliberate planning. And it’s been more difficult than I remember free-thought writing to be.

Yet, once again, here I am tightly fastened to my writer’s block.

A persuasive excuse for this could be that I have become enslaved by the gruesome hours on Mondays and Wednesdays that the administrative fates have gifted me with, pinning me to my bed as soon as the sun withers below my window pane. It could also be that fat pot of homemade roasted butternut squash topped with coarsely chopped fried…

I fall in love with cities, more so the people. Wherever I go, I find myself present. Then I leave to the next with no expectations, still lingering in the former on repeat in my mind and ringing in my ears. The best part? I find myself constantly surprised in the new by the foreign atmosphere, aura, and people. I record for myself new memos: James singing Johnny Cash in Deerfield Beach, Florida, windchimes shingling in Macon, Georgia, guitarists riffing off at Sarasota Open Gap Preserve in Palo Alto. Soon, the wistful memories dissipate. I then begin to synthesize pieces…

Comment allez-vous mes lecteurs?

It’s indeed been a while since I have shared my thoughts with the interweb. That’s because I really didn’t know what to do with them. They expanded, deepened, suffocated, terrorized, awoken, and finally revitalized me.

I have grown and further matured to understand the power of wisdom and thought: to learn how to control and not to be controlled by thoughts.

2020 was the year that taught me that. Forced to isolate physically, confront outside conspiracy theories, filter out the factually correct and incorrect, and sequester my thoughts and be my own refuge in them, I…

Centred in Atlanta, Georgia in the Northern tip of Emory is my favorite study space: Kaldi’s. Light trickles into this cafe — a harbinger that used to be a train station for utilities back in the 80s. It is now my harbinger where I come almost every night to write my essays, thought papers, read Latin, or cram for a German midterm. Here is the place that allows me to become a thoughtful chef of word concoctions and cocktails. And here, I am alone. Here I see friends come and go, grabbing coffee or late night meals. However, I am…

My Appa, opening the black metal garden gate, escorted me into the pathways that stretched East to West across the Mississauga hearty evergreen groves. The trees held the woodland creatures hostage during the heavy winters and fostered them during the pollen-sprung spring. And summer was coming: that meant it was soon time for the sun’s rays to stretch out, touching the tips of the flora. For me, summer meant my time in Canada was coming to an close. And walking towards the gate and searching for my Appa’s eyes, I felt scared. …

// excerpt from Intensive: Women in Literature

“Puis Barbie a rencontré le Prince Charmant,” Mme. Angela said. TAn unrealistic expectation that Disney movies imposed on me until recently.

I held onto the fantasy that I would find the one, the only one. With each failure, the fantasy dissipated, a part of my self-worth questioned.

Did I not deserve well, the best? If God has designated one for me, where is He? Where is The One for me?

I would carve something out of wax, something that doesn’t exist, to ransom my frustrations But, as a carpenter I must reconcile that…

// excerpt from Intensive: Women in Literature

We outline long-grown shadows in the field where we lay;
I set my gaze upon the apricot horizon.
I glide through the grisly Augusta Bay.

Pine nut and honeysuckle resound in May;
my lungs clasp onto pockets of air.
We outline our long-grown shadows in the field where we lay.

The red eyes sway and lead me astray
Juno orders Castor to cajole, capture, and case me into a black byway. But,
I glided through the grisly Augusta Bay.

Hell’s shadows gainsay against Jezebel,
the screaming demons that make me fall. …

I crawled through the Tiberian Sea

just to take a glimpse of a reflected light I

actually

did not want to see.

still My fingers itched the surface of the air trying to grasp for any remants of iron rust,

but you dissipated immediately.

Is it because you are a phantom

that teases me of my own vanity

that once stood

so

tall

now shattered

because of the ghosts of my pasts,

now including you.

You,

Are the ghost of my past.

You,

Are what I hope I never find stuck in my fingernails

not even as the dirt or grime

Or pulverized dust of

Your own flesh and bones.