“The Hour Before You”

I carry the weight of a thousand pillows against my stomach,
because that is what it feels like in the pit of me during the hour before I see you.
Every time.

I dream of moments I wish would happen,
imagining how they might unfold
good or bad.

My heart races with every flutter
when your warm touch finds my shoulder, my foot, or any part of me.

I cannot fathom how I am supposed to slowly process the moment your eyes lock onto mine
when I can barely control the pulsating beats of my heart
or the thoughts already racing through my head.

I couldn’t tremble the words out
because I feared the possibility
that the ending I had already imagined
might become real
if I dared to confess what I feel.

But I don’t want to hold myself back
from another possibility anymore,
regardless of all my careful reasoning
or the fear that comes with finally speaking
the truth of my feelings for you.

I only wish I had the strength to conquer that fear,
no matter how this could unfold;
whether beautifully or painfully
but especially if the answer turns out to be the one I fear
after I finally unfurl the map of my affection before you.

I wonder how I became so smitten
by the ambiguous acts of kindness
you have shown me again and again.

And I wonder why I keep locking myself
out of even the possibility of affection.

Is my fear of rejection
constricting my ability to weave the words
for everything I have been longing to say
everything I have been longing to feel?

I have tried to spread my feelings thin,
yet my heart has only widened
after every fleeting moment I get to spend with you.

I know I must eventually relinquish
these secret tides of devotion I have kept for you.

But when I finally let them reach the shore,
will I recover if your tides don’t rise to meet mine?

Parallel or Intersecting Crush?

My reality shifts from the thought of the moments with each potential guy but only one comes up more in my mind.

My words start to stutter just from the start of a conversation with one.

The volume of my voice shrinks down to a mouse when I speak to him because my mind is trapped upon the crush I have on him.

My eyes wander and my heart flutters at the speed of helicopter wings for both but still way more for one than the other.

My mind unfortunately tries to protect me because it warps around the possibility that our interests may align or are parallel?

My heart continues to flutter, my pupils widen, my breathing is sporadic , and my thoughts are scattered on multitude of things once he got near me.

I then start to realize I have to rewind my mind and body back to reality.

I realize the frequency of the stars aligning of an interest I have in guys never intersected….

My hopes get crushed and I’m left defeated to believe in a reality of finding love was possible. I start to question kindness and generosity as a token of interest from men, but it was a mere exaggeration of hope for love from my brain.

The feeling of despair quickly ruminated my thoughts because finding the one seemed impossible for a guy like me.

I start to feel saddened to be brought back in belief that men I crushed on all the time didn’t like me back. It felt like I was back at the drawing board every time.

I even start to question my love life:

Will I ever destined to feel the romantic gut wrenching feeling you get that is depicted in romance movies ?

Will I ever be destined to feel the touch of warmth, compassion, and love ?

Will I ever be destined to meet the one ?

Will I ever be destined to feel like I’ve met my person finally after so many failed attempts?

Will I be destined to be single for fifty plus years ?

The feelings I have for both men are strong but only one captures my heart from even the smallest glance and interaction I have with him.

I just want to know still : Are the stars of interest aligning to intersect or be parallel?

I don’t want to feel trapped in a hope that will never happen.

I don’t want to misplace my heart into a sea of void.

I don’t want to have my mind wander for an of endless loop of dreams and hopes.

I don’t want to ever have my little star that’s shrinking every year to believe interest of my love was never possible…..

“Seen by Lust, Never by Love”

Every Fleeting thought transpired like the blink of an eye when I conjured up a thought of each guy.

Each guy, I so happen to believe there was a chance of something, but
It was just an itch, or should I say their eyes of lust were captured seeing my bold black skin

Every encounter I had with a man who had lustful eyes for me as a potential for more

It was a constant reminder that I deserved more than what I endured and put myself through

As I heard each word come from their mouths, I felt each blow of pain behind each story they told me.

I could feel the loneliness that dwelt in their eyes, for the spark of sunlight had vanished and turned into smoke as time passed.

I could feel the anger ebb from their soul because each word from an ex made their fists clench and their pupils widen.

I could see how time passed by more for them than me because of age, but also because they've endured through several trials and tribulations.

I start to question how much time will pass for me.

Will I receive temptations to be deceived into lustful eyes of men, or have I already fallen prey to it?

I don't want to be tempted by the men I've encountered.

I want to continue to wish for sparkly romance, the spark of happiness you feel in your stomach and heart once you realize your crush likes you back. 

The way you feel when you kick your feet in the air when they say something that makes your heart flutter

The spark of just realizing they consider and think of you just as much as you do for them.

I just want to know how much I have to endure because I see through the eyes of some men who couldn't anymore and gave up

I still want to fight for love and be patient on this journey of finding the one.


“Repressed”

Person in dark raincoat sitting alone on a wet wooden bench in the rain
I repressed the moments I had with you 

I didn't want to feel the dread.
The dread of how you pushed a story of honoring boundaries, age equity, and verbal respect.
The stars did not align in the story; they scattered into oblivion.



I repressed the thought of your voice at the end, which lacked comfort.

I repressed the countless messages I thought could be just a goodbye, but turned into a way for a person's words to turn into bullets of cruelty.

I repressed the generosity you showed because it fled instantly like a cheetah.

I repressed the chemistry we had because you began to believe my love owed you; it was as if my heart had to stand on trial every fleeting second I interacted with you.

I repressed ever believing that you live across many pages of my story, but in reality, there was only room for you in one.


I was unfortunate to be cursed with one more disaster that I wanted to repress as the world leaves changed from orange to green.

He challenged my belief in love, but only because his glass of hope in finding it ran out.
He described the horrors of how love can put your brain on fire, lose trust in shared responsibility,  and damage your belief in feeling verbally and emotionally safe.
He dared to put me in the same box as these men of horror.

I cannot fathom the decision to partition me from the truth of who I am, only to categorize me among the failed trials of love.
My heart was pushed through the pain as I realized it did not matter how much testimony I pleaded before you. Your heart never found belief in mine, and instead chose distance inside the void.

I repress the pain.
I repress the tears.
I repress the agony.
I repress the intimacy.

But I refuse to repress the idea that love is still possible.


“Flesh over Feeling”

The eyes of some men only desire my flesh. Their minds are tailored to one objective, and that is my body.
I can’t quite understand how a deeply loving mindset and heart can provide such a strong connection, only to be degraded and dismissed like an empty surface.
It’s because my flesh is more critical to the naked eyes of some men. I once thought it would be different for me as a gay man, but I learned years ago that this struggle will be everlasting.
Some men can’t even fathom holding a deep conversation or building a genuine connection.
There’s a lack of conversational effort, vagueness, and surface-level words. I find myself spinning, searching for even a small grace of reciprocation for all the energy I’m pouring into the conversation.
It seems that building a connection is too exhausting for some men, even at the very beginning. Weaving the threads of something meaningful feels too much work, so they retreat into vagueness, assuming you’ll stick around for whatever scraps they give.
I’ve found that many men elicit their desire for flesh more readily than their desire for connection, because it’s easier. They don’t realize how much damage they cause with this cycle, how selfishly they destroy someone else’s hopes and needs just to serve themselves.
A person should be desired for how their personality shines through conversation. The desires of the flesh shouldn’t come first, not in the beginning stages. Building connections and deepening them through meaningful dialogue and shared experiences should be the standard.
When you fail to offer that and show up with selfishness and greed instead of presence and care, you drain the hope and joy from someone’s heart.
Love should be possible. But as I’ve learned, it’s much harder to obtain because some men’s eyes and minds are blinded by selfishness, lack of decorum, and disrespect.

“Barriers and Rivers”

Tears rushed like a river off the cliff briskly from one eye
As you saw the barrier 

Another formed in your mind, cluttered with numerous negativities and endless hope of escaping. This causes another tear to form swiftly out of your other eye.

Your thoughts rumble with more and more things that are barriers to your escape from the demise of your freedom and peace 

All you ever wanted to grace your spirit for a moment of tranquility in your heart, so the beats you hear in your chest can slow down and you wouldn’t have to hear the impending beats pound in your ear as you lie down.

You want your mind to escape the thoughts of hopelessness that maybe your peace won’t come at all. It is so hard to believe in this when one detrimental, whether tiny or big, thing happens then another comes along right after.

You want clarity in your spirit, you want happiness to be embedded in your heart, and you want ease and lack of unhappy thoughts to control your brain.

You just wish for the peace and freedom to be in a better place and have some of the things you hope for and some of the things you sacrificed

You just wonder when it will come as your patience tightens like the width of a pencil

“Erasing Hopes and Feelings”

I'm trying to get the images of us I had in my head
Out of my head 

I wanted it to be real 
I wanted to feel it 
Feel the warmth of your heart with my head near your chest

I just wanted to have a win
Where someone I like…. like me back

The feelings are disappearing….but slowly 

As I talk to you more and more
it gets harder to erase the romantic images of us
Out of my mind

I'm trying to destroy my feelings for you, but the hard part is that I don't want it to go away 

It was your smile 

Your presence as you walked onto the sand
As you walked closer and closer to me
The feelings I had for you were so strong at that moment

But I know I can't see you in that way anymore 
Because the clarity was stated already
I have let go of my hopes and dreams I had thought about having with you

I wanted it to be you so badly
Until I understood last week that you didn't want it to be me 
I will get through this, but I'm not sure how long this will take for me………

“Repeated Cycle of Misfortune”

It never fails for me

To seek a person in crush form type of way 
but to find out more about the person and 
Only to find out that person will never see you in the same way that you see them

They will never see you in a romantic way
They will never talk to you or hang out with you in the ways you replayed over and over in your haead about them and you

I will never be sought out for nor communicated romantically with by him.

I’m so glad I retrieved my clarity, and now I am no longer confused about his perceptions and intentions

I just wish this cycle of misfortune would stop from happening to me.

But I realized I can’t control how my heart felt for a guy in the beginning

Because I feel too much and overthink too

Part of me is so glad that no matter how much I did like him, I could never open my mouth to say it to him

I saved my integrity and from embarrassment by not doing so

God, I wish for just one time for me to crush on a guy, and they actually like me back because now my track record is 0 out of 7 instead of 0 out of 6

I feel this is and will be, unfortunately, repeated misfortune for me, and I don’t know if I can deal with another failure of crushing on the wrong guy……

“Cycle of Unrequited Crushes”

Why do I even try

Hints were flowed to you various times

You didn’t even notice any at all
Or maybe you did notice
Or maybe it’s not obvious at all


I want to pour my heart out so much to you

But I can’t because nothing comes out

Because I’m so afraid if it’s unrequited 
I’m afraid of getting hurt 
To know that the feeling isn’t mutual 

To know the fantasy images and videos I replayed in my head about us two  will never even happen 
To know it will never even be possible to happen
Once I know the answer if I were to ask you


I know this feeling of unrequited crushing because this happens frequently to me every couple of years
I crush on a guy and they typically never like me back especially if I’m the one who state how they feel first

I starting to dislike this cycle of crushing on a guy because it doesn’t seem to work out for me 

But I can’t seem to prevent my heart from crushing on a guy is the only issue ……

“Sacrifices”

Changes come with every passing day

Like a leaf on a tree starts to turn brown and crinkle as it gets closer to fall

Change is inevitable for nature

Change for us humans happens sporadically and instantly changes our mood depending on how we react

Change comes with having to make sacrifices 
Sacrifices that  kept you as a whole and sane and sacrifices that taught you so many life lessons

But with so many sacrifices comes unbelievable pain for each you gave up 

You may repress the thoughts and emotions by keeping busy, but unfortunately, they tend to come back at some point in a dauntingly aggressive way

The emotions tend to fill your body like a glass of water slowly as each day passes by until it is full 
Your heart, chest, and stomach are packed with so much water that it explodes out because you see the water is overflowing

It's overflowing because you bottled up your emotions and did not express your sorrow and grief about the sacrifices you made

It doesn't even help that everyday life situations, people, movies, and social media send reminders to you of what you lost and what you can't have at the moment 

You know these sacrifices were made for your future and that you have to look at life at what greatness is coming or the greatness you are about to do soon

Eventually, the sorrow you feel due to the sacrifices tends to dissipate, but the length of the process is unknown, and I wonder when it will happen for me……