i want to learn how to embrace silence, how to witness a man become a vacuum, how to afford the cost of chaos, how to fly around the web of my stretch marks and not worry about being snatched by my fears. each day, i wake up to questions boiling in my chest and wonder if this is what it means to lack music in my veins. what name do you give a nomad who st(r)ays far into his dreams enough to be called a lost one? what moniker is tender yet long enough to describe his path? somewhere in a bathroom, a big body shreds himself into layers, every fold of his skin becomes a projection waiting to be torn, apart. he stands upright, questions what swings in between his thighs and once again, their answers don't intersect. once again, he plunges into a sea, saltless, warm, like the water rushing down his head. to a big body, everything is a mother to reflections—every drop of water that manages to catch his gaze, the assembly of glass surfaces that lay by his bedside, his iPhone XR camera, the sliding door at his barbershop—everything is a reason for mockery. everyday, he doubts his relationship with food, rebuking some calorie in grains of rice and picking a bone with pieces of fried meat. between his flesh, blood and bones, patience is a virtue he struggles to juggle. through his trembles and jiggles and stretch marks and numbness and ragged breaths, he sifts through several thoughts like his stretched out shirts and oversized corduroy pants, rummaging for physical courage in anything that hugs his body tight—his almost faded tight jean trousers/ his best friends/ a glance in the mirror/ you're not that fat/ instagram likes/ motion has him on a hold, and every swerve he takes tug at the moribund places in him. perhaps, he has always been an estuary, perhaps it took drowning in this saltwater for him to find that out. or how else does a big body convince his joints that they too can be loose knots, that elastic too is a quality that can define their ligaments, that the sun isn't a threat to his desire to fly, that breathing too, can mean picking up fragments of freedom, hoping that one day, they'll morph into feathers, then wings, then an altitude high enough to house his glory and wide enough to contain his vastness.

Thirteen days have passed since my ship kissed the shores of Europe. I still hear the sea filling my ears with songs of hope, lazarusing wounds that stand as mementos of my past. There’s a stillness on my tongue. Some say it’s a type of sickness the sea leaves you with—a parasite—my homeland. Others call it longing, a special kind of love passed down from your mother. I call it loneliness, a cage without a singing bird, a strange map formed by the lines on my palms. Every part of my body stretches into a catapult and I wander without bearing. The hushes of fellow sojourners lull me to sleep but my eyes fight back. What’s the point of going into a place where only darkness stares back at you? The clatter of blades replace the drumming in my chest and I find myself in the middle of a war with wind and waves. Sam Smith’s Pray becomes a wheel that doesn’t stop spinning in my head—There’s fear in my heart and dread in my bones and I just don’t know what to say, maybe I’ll pray. But I don’t want to pray. I’ve hung my hopes in the frail hands of countless supplications. None of them boomerang back. I blink twice and wings sprout from my back. I morph into a creature doused in the colors of sea foams. I look down and none of my brothers are wearing the same whiteness I carry. No one sees me, not the softness I shed. No one hears me, not the cries that disguise as mews raining down on them. So, I fly higher and hope they find at least, white stains on their fingernails. And pray they hold on to them, like their hearts.