This Is Not a Love Poem

i am in love with people and places
in love with the thinkers, the creators, the wanderers
in love with big dreams, cautionary tales and storytellers

in love with the world around me and its curiosity
in love with every sunrise, falling sky and a million mysteries
in wondrous, captivating, all-encompassing love with a God
so big i can't fathom the story (and a love even bigger)

in love with oceans and the way they give and take away
in love with sharp boundaries and the fences we break
in love with living, and its infinitesimal nature; moth to flame

in love with the unflinching strength of the human heart
in love with raw emotion and difficult conversations, and
in love with the most elusive thing—chaotic inspiration

in love with statistical improbabilities
in love with maybes, what-ifs and possibilities
in love with Taylor Swift day-dreaming, wish-upon-a-star hoping

in love with a broken, beautiful generation of hearts
in love with the invitation to believe in better days
in love with the people i am lucky enough to meet—always

in love with the mathematicians of the ages, on black-and-white thrones
in love with the open-hearted stranger looking for answers
in so much love with the incredible great unknown

in love with everyday kings and queens
in love with an unbreakable, intimate, earth-span community
in love with a royal court that was only ever built for loving

i am in love with people and their stories
i am in love with people
i am in love
i am

tonight, 
as i struggle to remember 
that i am defined by a Love so great,

my prayer is just this—
let not the things of this world ever sway me.

a pointwise stroll (amongst the stars)

tonight, i walk to the edge and dare to look not down, but up
and i find that i have come further than i could fathom
so tonight i find myself contemplating the world in polar time
hanging on a horizon lit by the measure of a parameter
just beyond the reach of our comprehension—
comprehension in all of its finite, curious glory.

and as iron sharpens iron, so we will too
as we tumble through this rabbit hole of wonder
vast enough to hold the universe in its pocket
(and then some, because who measures the infinite?)
a universe so big i could never pinpoint the north star—
the one guiding all of our (extra)ordinary hearts.

chemical imbalance, in (way, way over) my head
sparking obvious midnight chances set against a backdrop
of telescoping ideas in n-dimensional space
space that could not be contained by the greatest atlas
space containing the lion-shaped constellations of our souls
and the thunderous hummingbird-song of our heartbeats.

Café Latte Musings

"A flamingo coffee with two sugar, one milk,"

The barista smiles brightly at me, the perfect start to a morning

complete with summer sunshine and blackened white zebra toast

The long-necked giraffes chatter, preparing for another day's work

It's a jungle out there in the great wide world

The toucans are curiously cute (but only from a distance),

their rainbow beaks hiding stashes of treasures (cinnamon biscotti)

teasing me with their streams of poetry and harmonies,

As they whisper too softly, planning oh-so-carefully,

getting ready to spend the day singing and fooling the elephants

Much unalike to the constant flutter of the wings of the hummingbirds

"She’s back in town, she's changed so much, have you heard?"

Gossiping on scintillating headlines, making waves with only wings

And filling the air with a million heartbeats, so fleeting you could never catch

a single word without a little help from a long-eared feline friend

I stare through one-way mirrors, observing the gazelles

Devising, searching, strategizing to stay on top for just one more day

After all, tomorrow is as tomorrow comes—right now, we play!

Stay oblivious to the next storm around the corner

as the espresso maker breaks, shattering glass onto the foxes' nest

The parrots gather together near the cappuccino pond

A rainbow clique of beauty and equally disorganized minds

Pecking at the chocolate trifles, always asking questions on repeat

Curiouser and curiouser, rolling loaded dice in this crazy life

Never finding the answers that they want in this earthly cacophony

The elephant sits alone with his Earl Grey tea, sipping from a ceramic mug

filled with the wisdom of the ages (and maybe a little bit of Irish cream),

supposedly reading from a tome of poetry, but really watching the monkeys

before they are quickly trotted back behind steel-trap bars

(The zookeepers are afraid that they will scratch, you know)

The well-dressed fox sends his dark roast back in a huff

and the tigress of a waitress proceeds to pounce (he'll be sorry)

as the buffalos stomp out, pretending they are of high society 

their steps echoing, yet quickly lost in the caffeinated madness—

Oh, just another morning in the jungle of humanity

for the one i'm thinking of tonight:
may your curious, wandering, brilliant spirit rest in peace.

a summary of this girl + this moment

butterflies. polynomials. the question that only you dared to ask. midnight lifechats. 1AM driving. whiteboard memories. thankfulness. Your Love. happiness. sisters (mine and yours). pumpkin pie. heartbeats. ashes for beauty. differential equations. maybes. music. apple cider. perfect autumn afternoons spent in playful conversation. don't tell me that it's never crossed your mind. the hard choices that brought me here. hazel eyes. bigger than life friendships. new friends. Sunday mornings. fleeting smiles. warm coffee cups. cinnamon sparks. Galois. safety. snuggly scarves. cats. risks. fall(ing).

The Accidental Poet

I've loved words for as long as I can remember.
However, seven-year-old me (and eleven- and fifteen-year-old me) hated poetry.

Poets were other people. Poets were beret-wearing, coffee-drinking, guitar-playing mad hatters who wandered around reciting in rhyme and iambic pentameter. (English classes did not help this stereotype.) Poets were strange people with stranger ideas who typed exclusively in lowercase. I definitely didn't want to be a poet.

You might have deduced by now that I didn't fall in love with poetry by choice.

In my senior year of high school, I took a Writer's Craft course in which we were forced to write poetry, and was surprised to find that maybe I didn't hate it (with the exception of the ballad. I still can't write those to save my life). So I found myself doing more of it—for marks initially, but eventually just for the joy of capturing everyday beauty (and pain). And slowly but surely, I found that I, too, became a writer of poems. No, not a poet. Just someone who wrote poems.

But tonight while writing my not-love-poem (it's a work in progress. The working title is "This is Not a Love Poem"), I realized that I am so in love with the art form, and it dawned on me that perhaps I have possibly, unwittingly become an accidental poet.

I've never thought of myself as a poet until tonight, but the idea no longer feels so otherly. For the first time, the name of poet feels like it could be mine.

I think I kind of love it.