Oblivion Is a Name
By JCaraballo
for friend with dementia
He no longer names me.
He only spits “you,”
as to a stranger
stealing an old face.
His voice drips slowly,
a sour hiss of dead words.
His hands —splinters of inert flesh—
***** at the void,
searching for a world long evaporated.
I speak to him,
but his gaze is smoked glass,
a blackened well
where my reflection drowns and disappears.
Dawn: a letter erased.
Night: a gesture torn away.
Memory, a barren tundra—
even grief takes no root;
only the wind,
a stray dog
sniffing through hollow bones.
There is no return,
no face behind the veil.
Only a body breathing blindly,
a name —his, mine—
bleeding out in my dry throat,
echo of a seed
that never breaks the soil.
Nov 5, 2025
Nov 5, 2025 at 11:46 PM UTC
Gecko on the Window
By J Caraballo
Warm light, a beacon for insects,
a window open to the nocturnal feast.
A body lurks in shadow,
stuck to the glass like a seal.
Eyes, lidless moons,
watch the ritual hum.
Tongue like lightning, silent judgment,
devours wings as if they were sins.
Each leap, a captive;
each prey, a silent confession.
The light calls them to eternal doom.
It answers with blind hunger,
no chants, no truce —
just a tense body in the night.
When the last insect falls,
it remains, motionless,
a sadistic god behind the glass,
devouring forever its domain.
Oct 25, 2025
Oct 25, 2025 at 7:21 PM UTC
The Hands of My Mother
by JCaraballo
When my mother’s hands trembled,
the steel within my soul fractured
into irreparable shards.
I was absent,
feeling estranged from the light
that gently welcomed me into this world,
a fragile leaf slowly withering
in barren, silent earth,
without a breeze to carry it upward.
A shadow that drags itself
through the fading light,
fleeing the night
that consumes all,
with sharp teeth
of unyielding remorse
that bite ceaselessly.
I am pain without forgiveness,
an echo of what I ought to have been.
But I was not.
Oct 15, 2025
Oct 15, 2025 at 11:43 PM UTC