Monthly Archives: February 2025

Jasmine

Jasmine

You arrived on sticks,
tied tight,
a gift wrapped in roots and hope.


For a while, you hesitated,
unsure of the walls,
the dry hum of city air,
the way light slanted in unfamiliar ways.


But then—
you exhaled.
Stretched.
Unraveled your green arms into the open,
spilled yourself like ink across the porch rail,
climbed the air as if it had always belonged to you.


Now, the wind is thick with your breath,
a perfume so soft it bends the dusk,
lingers in doorways like an old song.


At night, you fill rooms with something like memory,
something like longing,
something like home.

Inhale

Inhale

The streetlights hum their sodium glow,
casting long-limbed ghosts that never touch ground.
Neon stutters a half-formed sentence,
somewhere between a promise and a dare.

Bougainvillea tangles the fences,
unsure if it’s creeping or in cuffs.
A coyote watches from the shoulder of the 101,
waiting for night to blink first.

A skateboard whispers down an alley,
tracing the soft belly of a city,
where time pools and waits
for something better to happen.

But nothing better happens.
Only this.
And this is enough.