Table of Contents

My pieces of writing will be presented here as a gallery where you can scroll. However, if you'd like to click on certain ones, the titles will be provided here.

Sunlight

If I tell you a poem about the bandages I've placed on my wounds, would you lie with me?

Would you lie with me if you saw my shadow drift from me in the sunlight?

Seperate from me and tell you all the ways I've repressed it, would you lie with me?

If it walks freely and expresses itself in ways you've never seen before because it doesn't fit the image I've curated.

Would you lie with me if it starts to suck you in when it starts to feel abandoned?

Should I make sure I don’t walk in rays of sunlight so you won’t see my shadow?

Will you be so distracted by it that you won’t see the way the sun kisses my face?

The way the sun kisses my face, making my melanin skin turn golden.

The way my melanin skin glows and reflects the warmth of it. 

The warmth of it that I hope you feel because I may feel cold inside.

Would you lie with me if you saw my shadow drift from me in the sunlight?

Sarai R

Change is a Frenemy

Change has always been a frenemy. 

It chooses when to take away the things you hold dear to you,

Without telling you when you’ll get them back. 

It steals your time away, leaving you to only have it through memory.

It leaves you with the bitter aftertaste of sweet orange juice.

Change has been a consistent visitor in my life, 

Showing up to my door unannounced.

Although, there are some days where I hope change visits me.

The times where I feel trapped in holes that seem never-ending,

Is when I want change to come and rescue me. 

I want it to hold me and tell me that I am more powerful than these overpowering emotions my body holds.

Change is the only thing I think of when I hesitate on leaving this shell of a body.

Sarai R

Buildings Made of Nostalgia

When I’m physically not busy, my thoughts are. 

Towering buildings made up of nostalgia and grief that stand tall in my mind. 

I’m struggling to find the exit to this building,

Filled with mazes of my haunting memories. 

I keep asking these people for help on guiding me to the exit,

But they’re busy repeating silly lines to me.

“I’m sorry I can’t do this anymore,”

“I’m falling out of love with you,”

“It’s better if we stop being friends.”

I insist them on telling me something different,

But they don’t obey.

They get louder, screaming their words at me,

Echoing the walls of my mind.

I contemplate jumping off this building on the balcony,

But the distance from the balcony to the cement increasingly elevates.

I’m tired of running from them.

This building has become my home.

Their faces have become so familiar,

I am no longer filled with agony when I see them.

They’re so familiar that I try to associate them with the new faces that reach me in reality.

They gave me this building as a home to live in,

So I will generously give them my mind as a cave to reside in.

Sarai R

My Bathtub

Please put me in a bathtub.

Put me in a bathtub and run warm water for my bruises.

Put me in a bathtub so I can scrub the sensitivity off and fill the rest of this bathtub with salty tears of my own.

Fill the rest of this bathtub with my salty tears so there is no more left for them to see.

She asks, “Why are you so soft?”

Put me in a bathtub so the softness melts into the water.

So the softness melts and all that’s left is the dryness of my skin.

The softness melts and my body becomes as hard as a rock.

I came out of a bathtub, skin dull and dry.

This body is aching with the weight it’s carrying, 

Lacking the empathy it once had.

Please put me back in this bathtub of mine.

Put me in my bathtub so I can drown in the tears I made out of it.

Sarai R