Khasma.

You passed by and I breathed in butterflies. Their razor wings leave incisions, so delicately tearing away fragments of the past buried under hardened skin and coiled eyelashes. Inside of me, I feel ivies scaling jagged cliffs, creeping inside ravines; across the vast canyons in my heart where faith once gushed like secret rivers. In the deepest chasms of this weary land, your voice ricochets off stony walls; I hear it in my sleep. I saw you and I felt life take root.

And if the words I speak were written down, your name would appear in parentheses between frivolous professions of truth; like bubbles of thought that dare not escape the spiraling labyrinth of my subconscious.

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Thank you for leaving your secrets with me. You can read them here.

It's only fitting that I seal this project with a secret of my own. I met him once on campus (another time, a little while after) and I was stuck in a daze for weeks. Months later, the thought of him still gives me this weird feeling in my gut that I can only describe as a cross between exhilaration and genuine anxiety. This post is about him, obviously.

Happy birthday, Thickety-Split.