Every metaphor and simile talking about color, contrast, setting of time, makes my chest twist and my foot stamp. I used to feel it in my bones when authors spoke of the main character being cast in shadow or having autumn hair or pale skin flecked with freckles. Or the motion of waves under a too-blue sky, their crests glittering so bright you can't look at them straight. But all that, now, all that, every bit, the ghost of a memory of a ghost of a memory, a place the child version of me could inhabit, nothing but longing to the adult version of me.
So… what does the adult version of me do? He doesn't chase cool shadows or the fine secret etchings they reveal in wood when they fade back, the eureka puzzle code, the thing that has a feeling to it, the thing that matters, the logical solution, reward for hard work and good thinking. I can't even write those similes anymore, let alone feel them. I dream of being the kind of person who could trace those etchings when the shadows burn off and make meaning of them. An empty room, a blank page, paper smell, and a pen, and, luckily, the words.
So what do I do? I remember having potential and a future and the firm strong warm buzzing intent to make things.
I was gonna be an author. I would stop at nothing. You'd walk into a book store and find my name in the aisles. Maybe not at the front, maybe not in the endcaps, but I'd be there.
Now I can't even get friends to read me.
I'm nothing worth reading.
I'm throwing misshapen shouts into darkness and pretending they're something.
I'm dumb and gray and blank, but I'm still human enough to be a disappointment.
I'm just not worth reading anymore.
Mar 23
Mar 23, 2026 at 8:20 PM UTC
Hey.
I wish I were dead.
That's about all I can say.
I'm not so romantic to say I'd really rather run away into the woods--disappear on a bed of dry pine needles and sap and crawling crimling isopods,
catch meals with my bare hands,
bore tubers with my incisors,
dig in dark dirt,
make friends with the local coyote.
Mmm, nah.
I'd really like to
just be
dead.
The dead have the best stories.
The dead have the best sleep.
The dead have the best memories.
The dead have the best keep.
I want to eat
I want to drink
I want to stay where I am.
I want to make my dog happy
and I want to rhyme.
Drive your kitchen knife into the soft spot
below my jaw.
Find a literal ******* sword and plunge it deep into
my heart.
But don't stop it all at once.
Look at me,
see me,
know me,
have me,
while my blood stains your tennis shoes
and clogs your nostrils with
copper, iron.
I wish I were dead.
I want to die.
And I want to be there
to see what it's like.
Feb 27
Feb 27, 2026 at 9:31 PM UTC
Halfcock grimace
on jaundice cheeks
dimpled chin
******* up
beneath coffered jaw
***** ink
on too-broad pages
simply unwritten
last write adages
in eves
Jan 25
Jan 25, 2026 at 7:26 PM UTC
Elephants put their dead in one spot so the bones can bleach in the sun. Over months or years they return to their holy grounds to run their snouts along the smooth warm bones. But we carry our grief with fear and pain, to the point it contorts our bodies, spreads like infection, stops our lives. Is the problem that death is a contradiction? Or that we aren't allowed space to grieve? If it's direct family, you're given three days. Three measly days. **** you, sleep in twice, rub your nose, get back to work.
Other family? Aunts, uncles, best friends, pets, boyfriends? Zero days off. Take off, risk your job. We aren't given the time and space to grieve. Our bosses ask us if we're okay because they have to be able to show that they tried. Documented outreach. Witnesses to their care. Our inevitable collapse is not on them; they did their jobs, it's not their fault. So she killed herself at 31, what a shame. So he was so distracted he drove into an oncoming car, killing a mother and her child, and his ability to speak. So what she quit without notice on Monday. I did my job. I can't get fired.
**** you.
**** you.
**** you.
My god, **** you.
Dec 23, 2025
Dec 23, 2025 at 8:07 PM UTC
I held you with the desperation of sons
at war with one another
I threw down my sordid ideals
like the spilt blood of my own brother
I gripped my tongue with hard precision
like a worm in my fingers before the line
I looked at you through spirit-thick eyes
like seeing a thunderstorm for the first time
I held your name quiet and sober between my teeth
like a precious but godforsaken secret
I held you then
I threw myself down
I gripped your hips
I held them down
I moved around your body, and the others
like a salmon making his way to spawn
I stayed and swayed by your side
like a bat waiting for the dawn
I stared at you through a soft pink film
like a haze of pain my body forgot
I moved toward you in the sleep-gray dawn
like I expected you’d be gone--but you were not--
I held you then
I threw myself down
I gripped your hips
I held you down
I held you, then
I threw myself down
and gripped your hips
and held them down
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 9:16 PM UTC
Every day a dance, this dance, our dance, something artificial
something not for me--
I never liked dancing.
Being whole with my body like that,
letting it have its ways,
letting it have its rhythm.
I keep it under lock and key and
refuse it to gyrate or interlock or
any other such unbecoming nonsense,
yet there, fluorescent sheen
obscuring real shadow,
the interplay of bodies at war,
I dance.
Parry, ****** block, feint.
Move with your hips,
eyes, utterly captivated
and waiting I know not for what--
A touch? A whisper?
A look?
Nothing comes.
This dance is strained.
I pick bird feathers and flowers
and try and remind you.
Try to get between the tangles,
the well-placed tunnel of thorns,
see peeks behind the curls,
blush: it wasn't for me.
But how can I admit
(outside of my own silence,
fallen deep into books that hit
too close to the truth,
my bittersweet angst and waiting,
curled in myself)
how badly I need this dance?
How garish of me,
how corny,
how gross,
how unwelcome--
Yet I burn and I burn and
there's no balm
and I dance your dance
even once you've left,
haunted by your vermillion borders,
your honey,
freckles,
breath--
It's not for me, I know, I'm
sorry
that I burn this way.
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 9:14 PM UTC
I have often thought with longing
of how colors used to scream
on days that used to be
blended violent green
with swirled chaotic ink
dripping into the drink
How they hid the sun with knuckle grips
and the shadows bathed our fingertips
I have often thought with rage
of the squishy summer days
whose memory faded and blurred
while yellowjackets stabbed our legs
how stupid it's all over now
that's how I remember them
how ******** it's faded now
the sky's colors fell too dim
I have often thought with longing
of your profile stained in glass
an eternal thing of lines and curves
I can't seem to get past
though I forget everything else
each **** smudge and swirl
I remember the perfect shape
of you standing by the door
serene and cold and beautiful
a thousand thoughts away
I'll trace the dark outline of you
until I run out of days
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 9:12 PM UTC
A creek whispered
between the gnarled roots
of invasive Japanese honeysuckle;
racoons left pawprints in the clay.
Robins left back-toed clawprints
in the grit
along the shale.
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 9:10 PM UTC
We have
what we found
buried two inches
in fine earth.
That's it.
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 8:57 PM UTC
We thought about you
when the weather turned
and the days got short
When the kids went out
in their heinous pumpkin suits
to solicit
cheap candy
It was very you
It was color and whim and charm
We thought of you
We will think of you
The way you laughed
in the face
of a sordid tragedy,
of fetid rot and sweet decay,
and grief that clenches teeth,
and a new place
to be.
Not gone, just away?
Neither.
Here.
Different current.
Different form.
Same warmth.
Same laugh.
Same smile.
Same kindness.
Same, "hey, you doing okay?"
to a stranger with a frown
while your whole world
fell down.
Bubblegum pink
and tundra blue
And soft purple fabric
and comfort
and warmth.
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 8:53 PM UTC