Frigidity wounded the tender palms,
numbness nestled in beards,
crystals of snow hung from her earrings;
all now photographs that have creased.

The souls stare into the windows once mistaken for walls,
recalling their shadows chained to the stagnant snow,
but the seasons are meant to spiral,
and amidst the mosses osculated by winters,
there bloomed petals adorned by renewal.

Some cling tight to the yarn,
afraid of pointed crystals shredding the weave,
while some recall the cold, garbed in a tender sweater —
the tender sweater spun by bleeding hands,
pricked by needles and lost amongst the threads.

Once one with the pine tree,
trembling in a blizzard,
they now converse of and with past,
clad in fabrics of rejuvenation.

Something Beautiful After

I didn’t expect to want again. Touch had become a memory, a ghost I nodded to in passing—familiar, but too far.

Then you walked in like a secret I didn’t know I was still allowed to want. Not loud. Not demanding. Just sure.

Your hands didn’t ask questions—they knew answers. Like they’d waited their whole life
to map this skin I’d buried under silence.

You kissed me like it wasn’t a reward, but a right—like you’d earned it just by seeing me
and staying.
Staying when I trembled.
Staying when I burned.

This isn’t a rebound.
This is a rise.

There’s something holy in how you undress me—not just my body, but the layers I kept hidden even from myself.

With you, it isn’t just passion—it’s permission.

To want.
To ache.
To feel everything again.
Lips like an offering.
Fingers like truth.
Breathless doesn’t mean broken anymore.

You don’t heal me—you remind me I’m already healing. That I’m not ruined, I’m ripe.

And now—now I know the difference between being needed and being wanted.
And God, you want me. Like fire wants air. Like night wants skin. Like I want you—with everything I was once afraid to give.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

Fighting for sleep,
fighting for peace.

Manic, depressive
episodes, just
to start.

Doing everything I can
just to not
fall apart.

So I can
make it another day—
wake up
with a fresh start.

Tried to reset,
tried to see,

but the future is blurred,
and I can’t believe
I’m back at square one:

the battle
of the elastic
heart.

The knives
hit harder
this time,

but I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid
to get back up,

and show the world—

I’m not broken.
I’m not folded.
I’m not out
for the count.

i had no idea how heavy
the heart can be
when it clings
to a dream long gone.

i didn’t need reminding
of how selfish i’ve been.
i stayed away
to find clarity, space—
and who i was meant to be.

my roots are still fixed in the dark.

but i know now
what it’s like
reaching through the clouds,
and being crowned by the sun.

with my first chip in hand.
after thirty days,
i’m ready to speak again,
and let love back into my heart.

the process… zoological zoa logos

living words, made of sentient letters,
let us imagine,

leave us time and space,
gravity and velocity,

we adapt ideal ideas, perfect plans,
recipes for peace past comprehension,

co-here co-opera ratiocination, balance

app raise worth… wait, not weight value,
app raise value of attention paid per precept

time tools take parallel Elohim zoas, eh,

Blakes Creator uses compass and calipers,
believed imaginary until one sees through

new lensing concepts

My mind dances and swirls the jive and the jitterbug skirting around a myriad of colourful thoughts and shapes and places that may or may not exist.
It lurches as if somewhere my rebel self has pulled the emergency break and comes to a screeching halt leaving me vacant and vague beyond the reach of this world.

My mind has within it realms filled with volcanoes, raging waters and cliff edges lined with gorse bushes and burns me, scalds me, swallows me up periodically or else some dark shadow of who I am pushes me over the edge and I fall into a kind of abyss.

My mind is alive and buzzing and builds ladders from words once spoken by kind mouths. My mind can call my name and ****** me back to life and whisper hope into my heart as it builds a ladder from nothingness and leads me from death.

My mind is beyond comprehension and yet simultaneously can be almost transparent and articulates itself to me with passion and such clarity.

My mind is more magical than Houdini, darker than living inside a top hat, more robust than the largest of diamonds, weaker than egg shell, contains more colours than a rainbow, its intricate, it has the ability to distort like fun house mirrors, it devours knowledge like chocolate cake, it can be sloth-like or ant-like in its focus and diligence in extremes, it’s Narnia and Wonderland and fallen fairy tales blended, poisoned and polished.

As a baby, my mind – sponge, soaked everything up and yet refused to be wrung out.
As a five-year-old my mind put Picasso and Carroll and Barrie to shame and built up worlds in which I could live, created threads and wove them into reality and forced prisms into my eyes so when the sun shone I saw everything in magnificent vibrant glorious spectrums of colour.

As a ten-year-old my mind built a court house - old style - judge, jury and executioner. It planted olive groves and slipped olive branches out through my mouth - they tasted like Brussel-sprouts - they made me gag but had to be endured as I passed them and myself between those around me, grasping my ideals that the world could be changed, hanging on for grim death.

As a teenager my mind opened wide, it came to life like a popup book, scenes remembered unfolding as if a gust of wind blew ferociously through it and yet my mind also closed the book, closed itself, locked the doors, bolted the windows and drew black velvet curtains until there was nothing but numb blankness. It made me grow wings, colourful and exotic and taught me to fly and I did fly higher and higher until the air grow too thin and my wings would wilt, feathers shedding as I would plummet, colours fading to greys and blacks and I would be scorched by red hot lava, fight for my life in violent seas and be thrown into the gorse bushes staring over the cliff edge into the abyss. Sometimes my mind pushed me over the edge, other times I balanced like a circus freak and other times I dared myself to fall and did. And then my mind would haunt me, punish me, berate me before gentle breathing into me - bringing me back to life.

And now, at twenty-five I find myself not wanting to run from my mind, not wanting to close it down or sedate it with medication. Instead, I watch it fascinated, horrified, feeling somewhat the ****** with the same morbid urges that makes one slow down and look at a car crash by the road. I am exhausted by it. I am frightened by it. I am intrigued by it. For the first time in my life I am letting my mind play out despite not knowing steps to that waltz I am trying to dance.

I was never addicted.
I was always starved for affection—
That pleasure I tried to find
Here, in my core,
Was only an attempt to rescue
The girl in her old bed
In that house filled with
Violence,
Neglect.

Where no one ever told her a story
Before she fell asleep,
Where no one ever said
“Good night,
Sleep with God.”

Today,
She’s feeling her way along the walls
Of her cold house,
Trying to find
The path back home.

—It was always about
Feeling loved.