downtown walks
and cigarette smoke
see my five year plan
pretend im living there
oh new york city
she earns my shimmer

She answered,

"Yes, it's just me!"
When asked,
"Just one seat?"

The group brunches,
The dinners,
And the lunches

Summer lake days,
Wedding invites,
And getaways...

Feeling "forgotten"
In places she
She fought to be in

Is her existence
A burden?
Why the distance?

Does she make you
Uncomfortable?
Truths misconstrued

How long must I endure this?

I won’t say that I doubt You,
I am just struggling to understand You.

I know salvation is a gift.
I know heaven is not something I earn.
I know the cross settled a debt I never could.

But then what am I doing here?

If every reward worth having waits beyond this life,
why does this life feel so long?

How much heartbreak is a man expected to carry?
How much disappointment?
How much uncertainty?

How many times must I lose what I thought was secure
before I stop reaching for it?

I ask these questions knowing I am not the first.

Job sat in the ashes
and wondered why he had been born at all.

Elijah collapsed beneath a tree
and asked for the journey to end.

Jeremiah cursed the day he entered the world.

Paul himself looked toward eternity
and confessed that part of him desired to leave.

You have heard these questions before.

You have heard them from prophets,
from apostles,
from faithful servants whose names became Scripture.

So I know You are not offended by mine.

What I struggle to understand
is the purpose of the struggle itself.

I understand obedience.

I understand sacrifice.

I understand denying myself.

But sometimes it feels as though I am spending my life
making withdrawals from my own soul.

Giving.
Serving.
Enduring.
Trusting.

And I keep waiting to discover
what all of it is building toward.

I keep searching for the moment
when faith finally feels worth the cost.

Yet every answer seems to lead me
to something I wasn’t expecting.

Not a reward.

A relationship.

As if all this time
I have been asking You for explanations,
while You have been offering Yourself.

As if the point was never merely surviving long enough
to reach the destination.

As if the destination was learning to walk with You.

And that is where I hesitate.

Relationships are built through time,
through trust,
through shared experiences.

And if that is true,
then suffering is not merely something to endure.

It is where trust is tested.

It is where faith becomes more than agreement.

It is where I decide whether I will pull away from You
or lean into You.

Whether I will close my fists
or open them.

Whether hardship becomes a wall between us
or a bridge toward You.

Maybe that is what I am beginning to understand.

Not that suffering is good.

Not that pain is easy.

Not that every wound comes with an explanation.

But that every hardship presents a choice.

To grow bitter
or grow closer.

To accuse
or to seek.

To run
or remain.

And perhaps the relationship I keep asking for
is being built in those moments.

Not by the suffering itself,
but by what I do with it.

By how I carry it.

By whether I bring it to You
or carry it alone.

I still have questions.

I still want answers.

I still long for joy that feels easier to reach.

But for the first time,
I wonder if the relationship I desire with Christ
is not something that simply happens to me.

Perhaps it is something I participate in.

Something formed,
decision by decision,
through every disappointment,
every loss,
every unanswered prayer,
and every difficult season.

And if that is true,

then maybe the question was never
how long must I endure.

Maybe the question is:

Who am I becoming
while I do?

Late at night
when shadows reign

My glasses off
a hovering blur

Face brought close
to clarity found

Threat detected
defenses raised

Have you ever been frightened by a spider?

Eight black arms fanned out for battle
Eight black arms saying don’t think twice
Imagine
Eight black arms closing in around you
an envelope of death
a tomb of silk

But would you say you have a fear of spiders?

I might flinch but my hands still crush
I might scream but my shoe wins out
I might never lose but another will fold
panicked paralyzed hyperventilating nausea

Irrational?
You claim you understand 
yet then you turn around 
to say something like

What’s the worst that could happen?
She says no?

Yes! Exactly that!
Except you and I have different
definitions of ‘worst’
It’s one thing to occasionally get yourself bitten
Another to always get caught in the webbing

It’s the kind of thing that makes you not want to try
The next pretty girl’s gonna walk on by
And you’re just gonna drain the rest of your drink
thinking about dreaming of what it’s like to fly

Then when you do try, conversation dies
but you’re still enwrapped in all her silks
What could I have said? What could I have done?
How could I improve? How can I shine
brighter?

Only there’s never an answer
You cut your hair and nothing changes
You dress differently and nothing changes
You brush your teeth and nothing changes
You follow advice and nothing
changes

And people
don’t
get that

For one
a rejection is a bitter wound to lick
for another
it’s the thousandth cut

A venomous bite
injecting a slow
agonizing death.

Neurotoxins spread
a nervous system
shut down

Spine corroded 
insides liquefied 

Drank until
only husk remains

So does it finally make sense to you
now
why I might be afraid
of spiders?

Love Notes: 

A floor coated
in half empty boxes,
old scribbled on pages
of poems
never seeing the eyes of another,
socks scattered
in every corner,
and dirty
t-shirts lying in between.
A layer of dust
zig-zagging
through the mismatched earrings
and unpaid parking tickets
on the dresser. Debris
that is seemingly nailed down,
no right place to begin
wiping down
the ever-growing
clutter in your head.

Wants to rattle your teeth,
split your lip,
swell your nose,
make it bleed.  

Wants to black your eye,
to turn it green
then yellow,
to make it hard to see.  

Wants you plucking gravel and
glass from your knees,
picking scabs,
nursing lumps for weeks.  

Wants to send you home to mama
crying for bags of frozen peas.
It wants to make you beg.
It wants to make you plead.

Chandra envies your pearly teeth
brighter than Mt Everest’s snowy peak

your tongue tastier than saag paneer
spicier than chicken tikka masala

your breasts, surely, softer
than a newborn lamb’s wool

your dainty feet, so supple
how do they hold you up?

allow you to escape from me?

In just the first half of this year 
my brother and his wife bought a house
my parents sold theirs – the inevitable downsize –
and I signed a new rental lease
          on yet another divorced person apartment.
Three factions of family
in three very distinct 
stages of life.
So much of the remaining inventory from the sprawling family “compound,” as we called it,
conveniently shifted to my brother’s first house;
just as my parents transported so many well-loved things to my now-former house
just four years ago,
          when my life had a very different hue.  
I am now nearly nauseated by the thought of 
“Things;”
at least the kinds that go in cabinets and on shelves; 
as I’m filling boxes for the second time inside a year
I am rampantly relieving myself of so many
“Things”
that were packed, moved, and unpacked, only to sit.
I have no use for sitting,
not anymore.

This stage is one of moving, both
household and heart,
boxes and body,
and I resent what weighs me down.
What’s weightless, I think:
The river breeze on my closed eyes
those cirrus clouds against the powder blue sky 
that bunch of clover and yellow trefoil (the carpet of my childhood)
bird feathers and seashells as treasures
and time…
soul tended by the music
his hand in mine
sure-footed steps 
somewhere I’ve never seen.

6/15/26

I see the future, always hovering in shadows.
How the afternoons sail by, short
in hindsight, so indistinct—blur of soft
dove-gray, goldfinch-yellow. A shell-pink spell
in which she’s bending, supple
as a willow, green, sanguine
or dune grass blowing on sandy
slope splashed with navy shade—  

Do you still see her? Waist deep in shallows,
sun-warm? Time sparkles, shimmers—
swells in magic circles, then slides off, white swan
vanishing into a mute reflected sky.