I’ve always felt like a social butterfly, an influencer, the life of the party, etc.—but I’ve also always felt alone. I love my friends and family, but I covet my time alone, which is why I enjoy solo traveling so much.
No One Wants to Write Poems About the Proletariat Anymore
I want someone to see me./
I want someone to know/
it ain’t easy.
Notes of My Native Language
A common question I get asked by both Asian and non-Asian people is: “Do you speak your native language?” With the expectation that I’ll say, “Yes, I speak the language of whatever exotic ethnicity I look like.”
America
If I met America at that bar on 8th St, I wonder if he would correct me
And tell me that’s not his preferred pronoun
Beauty is A Bad Investment, But I Can’t Stop Buying
I think it’s foolish not to appreciate the creative aesthetic of beauty. Beauty is literally some women and femmes’ livelihood and often beauty is the job that will pay most when other jobs are still overrun by men. The question shouldn’t be is beauty worth or time, but rather what you’re getting out of beauty.
Poems by A. Trufanov – Vol.2
I came to say,
That I love you,
But instead, you gave me nothing
That I could hope for.
Terminal 3
I daydream a lot about floating in the air. A slow, sort of dead man’s float across the sky. This doesn’t make much sense to me because I don’t like planes. Or swimming. I prefer concrete over carpet. Analysis over meditation. So, the floating in the air thing—well that is a little crazy. A contradiction to my nature that feels oddly good.
Drift Away
I found I was still able to evoke emotions and capture beauty. It was safe. It was comfortable, and I never had to look away. Rather than feeling lost, I felt that I wanted more and could do more. I began to see the clouds as art, as the way they might look or could look. I saw them as paintings, as layers, and eventually, some as abstracts.
Shitty Luck
Supposedly, there is only a .02% chance of getting crapped by a pigeon each time you venture outside. But my chances seem to veer closer to 100%.
Powdered Donut Days
“Addiction is all or nothing thinking,” my father told me, “like your battle with depression. You either pull yourself together or completely succumb to the sadness, never leaving your bed. All or nothing thinking, the hardest and most manipulating kind of reasoning.”
So Long, Farewell My Child
“Mama,” you’ll say. “Mama, Mama.” And I’ll be the one to blame. Taking a second fall that never pushes back against a tide of shits and mouthful of fucks. Nameless and easy to point out the pangs of absence and guilt. Useless and replaced with something even more robust and diligently cared for.
The Depths To Which We Sink
It lies in their souls. That Earthly promise of life beyond the flesh and ascent into the sky along an arch formed by rain. It is only the drowned—buried under the seafoam corpses of our ancestors—whose souls remain in the sea.
Alien Chatter
My dissociative self is sadly not a witness to my world but a captive to my mind, chained to the fear that the minute I return to the restaurant floor, my body will cave into a carcass and dissipate into dust.
David In The Dark
For years after Arturo’s death, Robert lived as a recluse, conspiring with David in the dark. David understood what it felt like to be modeled after his maker and his maker’s desires, only to become something far greater, lonelier, the romantic genius always looking over the precipice.
“You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Died In New York”*
New York had become my campus, or so the flyers advertised. In subway stations, at museums, on trains, in taxicabs, outside restaurants, on street corners, I found myself asking the question: What makes a New Yorker?
What follows are my observations.
Why I don’t drink
I am often asked why I don’t drink. Everyone asks me: people in Pakistan and people in countries that are not Pakistan. I like to joke that I do drink—water, lemonade, coffee, chai. If I didn’t drink, I would likely die. No one ever wants to know why I don’t drink carrot juice or why I don’t eat hard-boiled eggs, but it is of utmost importance for them to know why I don’t drink alcohol.
HBO’s “Our Flag Means Death” is A Masterpiece in ‘Fuckery’
Putting aside the scurvy, wooden fingers, and telepathic seagulls, Our Flag Means Death is a show about outcasts for outcasts. It’s silly, sometimes irreverent, but brilliantly tender. It’s not just a rom-com or situational comedy; it’s a queer elegy—honoring those outcasts in history who chose to risk their lives for freedom and perhaps even love.
Seeing is Believing
Is this how it ends? Does she have my face? Am I gonna die? Why is it that a simple thing like going to get food and trying to eat healthy spirals into something where I don’t feel safe? Cops could be involved.
CANDY SHOP
In my worst nightmares, I’m standing outside the Candy Shop,
crying on the sidewalk in Brooklyn.
A moment in time—
where only I could remember
the night you refused to come out and talk.