The room keeps slightly bending at the corners after dark,
Like the walls have lost conviction, losing outline, losing mark,
Every clock develops tremors like a cheap exhausted spark,
And the silence spreads beneath me like a flooded park.
I can feel my mind unbutton somewhere deep behind the eyes,
Like wet wallpaper curling while a ruined building dries,
Thoughts arrive malformed and fevered in delirious disguise,
And the names I used to worship now sound distant, dead, and wise.
The show must go on —
What a brutal thing to say,
Like a person can outsing the rot that’s eating them away,
So I stand beneath the spotlight while my hands begin to shake,
And pretend I’m still a person for the audience’s sake.
I have started fearing mirrors for the mercy that they lack,
How they hold me in their surface like a thing they won’t give back,
My reflection lags behind me like a shadow gone off-track,
Like it’s learning how to live once my mind goes fully black.
And God — the repetition of the supermarket glow,
The television flickering like a river running beneath the snow,
Human voices flatten slowly into static, dull and low,
Till every word resembles something buried long ago.
Some nights I hear my father in the plumbing of the walls,
Not speaking — just existing in the water when it calls,
And I sit there in the kitchen while the yellow ceiling crawls,
Feeling pieces of my memory loosen softly from their stalls.
The show must go on still, though the script has come apart,
Though there’s broken radio towers throwing sparks across my heart,
Though my thoughts now move like insects in a mason jar of dark,
And the person I once was has disappeared without a mark.
So I smile when people ask me if I’m doing well these days,
While the world grows slightly stranger in a hundred subtle ways,
And somewhere underneath the noise, beneath the traffic’s endless blaze,
I can hear my mind collapsing to a slow electrical haze.
6d ago
May 29, 2026 at 6:45 AM UTC
Three thousand miles from anything I’d ever call a place,
I wake with foreign light falling cold across my face,
The ceiling hums like it’s reciting someone else’s case,
And I can’t find a single trace of me it will embrace.
The morning feels pre-owned, like someone left it on the curb,
A half-lived day with edges dulled, its meaning slightly blurred,
I try to fit inside it but my shape feels undisturbed,
Like I’ve been edited from something I once clearly heard.
No one to mark my leaving, no device to track the route,
No archived proof I vanished, no one I could reroute,
Just distance growing louder in a quiet, total mute,
Like I was never entered in the system to compute.
I skate the cracked-up parking lot behind a shuttered store,
Each push a small defiance I can’t justify much more,
The asphalt doesn’t ask me who I used to be before,
It receives the friction and doesn’t keep a score.
I keep thinking maybe “home” was just a borrowed tone,
A frequency I tuned to but was never really known,
Something people say when they don’t want to be alone,
Not something with a spine that you can actually be shown.
They didn’t even hate me—that would mean I still exist,
No anger, no explosion, just a quiet little twist,
Like tossing out a cup you didn’t notice that you missed,
And suddenly I’m landfill in a life I can’t resist.
I talk to God like static, like a channel I can’t clear,
Half-prayer, half complaint that something real should still be here,
But heaven feels like distance stretched too thin to interfere,
And all I get is echoes that dissolve before they’re near.
The wind moves through the alley like it knows me by my name,
Or maybe I just need it to pretend I’m not the same,
To say I wasn’t thrown away but slipped out of the frame,
Though every version of it circles back to quiet blame.
I try to sit with stillness like the monks talk about,
Let thoughts dissolve to nothing, let the ego bleed out,
But mine just multiplies itself in fractal loops of doubt,
A system built to turn all certainty to drought.
And yet there’s something low and dull that doesn’t disappear,
Not hope exactly—more like something stubborn staying here,
A pulse that doesn’t care if I am wanted or austere,
Just beating like it’s proving I was never theirs to clear.
So I exist in limbo, three thousand miles out of phase,
A ghost of who I was caught in geographic haze,
Not found, not even missing—just erased in subtle ways,
Still waking up to mornings I don’t know how to phrase.
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 8:25 AM UTC
I count past ten though no one’s footsteps ever start,
A volunteer to absence, drafted quietly apart,
The room conspires with silence, every angle doing its part,
To prove invisibility is less a trick than it is art.
I learn the language of a game that no one plays,
Where time elongates strangely in unmeasured, vacant ways,
The air grows dense with all the words I never phrase,
And even echoes hesitate, then dissipate in haze.
I wait for chance disturbance—some misstep, some mistake,
A floorboard’s mild betrayal or a breath I didn’t fake,
But stillness holds its discipline; it will not even break,
As if neglect itself were something no one needs to make.
I trace the outline of myself against the wall,
A silhouette that flickers, half convinced it stands at all,
Each thought returns rehearsed, a well-acquainted call,
Insisting I am both the fault and architect of fall.
I inventory failures with a near-religious care,
Reciting them like scripture to a god that isn’t there,
Each memory revised to prove I’m less than what I wear,
Until the act of breathing feels like something I must spare.
I try to curate peace from fragments I can find,
Small architectures built from scraps of an unquiet mind,
But every structure lists, asymptotically misaligned,
As if contentment were a theorem I’ve misdefined.
I test the thought that maybe I could simply let things be,
Release the need for verdicts that keep sentencing me,
But doubt rehearses arguments with practiced fluency,
And every softer notion meets immediate scrutiny.
The dark becomes a habitat I no longer contest,
Its logic slow and patient, like a pulse beneath the chest,
I synchronize unwillingly, adopt it as a guest,
Then host it far too well until it names itself “rest.”
And yet beneath the weight of this compulsive, inward stare,
A question forms unbidden, fragile in the air,
If no one ever sought me, was I absent—or just there,
Misfiled within a game that never learned to care.
I’ll count one last time, though numbers blur and lose their former sense,
No seeker, no discovery, no rupture of suspense,
Just me, and all the versions I have tried and found too dense,
Still hiding in a place that never offered recompense.
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 8:12 AM UTC
He came down the line where the black rails gleam,
with a coat gone thin and a restless dream,
and a past that burned at the ragged seam,
like a life half-lived in a broken scheme.
He took from a store in a boarded town,
where the dust hung thick and the sun beat down,
left a door half-wide and a clerk face-down,
and a silence settling like a heavy crown.
They spoke of a woman he left one spring,
when the thaw ran high and the fields would sing,
but he cut that tie like a useless string,
and he carried the loss like a hidden sting.
In Memphis he walked by the river’s bend,
where the current dragged what it couldn’t mend,
and he watched it roll like an old false friend,
that will take what you are and not pretend.
The law wrote his name but it never stayed,
just ink that blurred and a mark that strayed,
like a truth half-told or a debt delayed,
or a memory worn that begins to fade.
By winter his shadow had drawn in tight,
and his breath came slow in the brittle night,
and the stars looked dim with a borrowed light,
like they’d seen his road and had lost the sight.
One night where the tracks split east and west,
he stepped down hard with a hand to his chest,
like a man worn through who can’t find rest,
and the dark closed in like an answered test.
Now the rails still hum through the lowland hill,
through the frozen cut and the iron chill,
and some say they hear, when the world goes still,
not a ghost, not a name—just a broken will.
Apr 20
Apr 20, 2026 at 7:49 AM UTC
There was a point—I think—where things aligned,
not into truth, but something I could keep,
a quiet architecture of the mind
that held together long enough to sleep,
and did not ask what moved beneath so deep.
But now the pattern interrupts itself,
mid-thought, mid-line, mid-anything I claim;
I reach for something settled on the shelf
and find it slightly altered in its name,
as though recall and error are the same.
It isn’t violent—nothing breaks outright.
The shift is small, persistent, hard to prove;
a sentence rearranging as I write,
a meaning stepping just enough to move,
then vanishing before I can improve.
And there is someone speaking when I think—
not other, not myself, but not quite one;
we overlap at some unstable brink
where what is said and heard cannot be done
without undoing what they’ve just begun.
He says I knew this. Says I chose to stay.
Says there was never anything to miss.
I ask him when it started. He turns to say:
“Say it didn’t. Say there’s nothing prior to this,”
and smiles like something proving what it is.
I try to trace the origin of thought,
to find the first misstep, the earliest seam—
but every point I settle on is caught
inside another version of the scheme,
as if the cause were also what I dream.
The days proceed. I follow them exactly.
They open, close, repeat what they allow.
But something in their order acts abstractly,
as if the then is only shaped by now,
and I agree without remembering how.
I test the world by touch, by weight, by name—
each answer comes, but not the same as asked.
The proof is always almost, never tame;
it passes, but in ways that leave it masked,
as though completion were a thing surpassed.
He laughs again—not loud, but well-placed, near.
Not cruel—just certain I will understand.
“You want a boundary,” he says. “It’s here:
where you decide which version gets to stand.
The rest?”—he shrugs—“they slip beneath your hand.”
But I have felt them. Versions not retained.
Moments that fracture just before they stay.
A thought I know I had, but can’t explain,
except as something taken, moved away,
and placed where I no longer think to say.
Sometimes I hear them moving in the walls—
not sound, but something shaped like what it means,
a pressure where no language ever falls,
a presence threading through the in-betweens,
as if it lives in all I’ve never seen.
If this is clarity, it’s far too thin.
If this is madness, it is far too precise.
It does not shout—it quietly steps in
and reorganizes what would suffice,
until there’s nothing left I’d call concise.
So tell me—no, not you—tell me again:
what holds, what breaks, what separates the two?
Or is the asking just a way to bend
what might have been a single point of view
into this split that neither side can prove?
I keep going. That seems required of me.
Not forward—just continuing the line,
though every step revises where I’ll be,
and every thought redefines what is mine—
and leaves me asking which of us is I, and where is my mind.
Apr 8
Apr 8, 2026 at 11:09 PM UTC
I ride a train that will not name a single station,
Its windows loop the same unfinished narration,
Each mile a proof that cancels prior demonstration,
A theorem built from motion without destination.
The conductor speaks in calm, recursive tones,
Announcing stops that never quite condense to zones,
A map unfolds yet only multiplies the knowns,
While every answer seeds more intricate unknowns.
I pace the aisle—yet distance will not reconcile,
For every step returns me by a mirrored file,
As if the track were drawn in some perverse defile,
A Möbius of will that folds me back a while.
Then I disembark—at least, I think I do—
Onto a bus whose architecture won’t construe
An exit point: no doors, no breach, no avenue,
Just sealed equations humming where escape withdrew.
Its engine drones in undecipherable refrain,
A language halfway formed between machine and brain,
Where time dilates but never offers any gain,
And forward turns to sideways, sideways into same.
The passengers are calm in ways I can’t defend,
They read the air as if it were a text to mend,
Each page asserts the journey has no need to end,
That stasis is the curve on which all motions bend.
I try to mark a difference—here versus before—
But every metric bleeds into a common core,
A paradox that logic cannot quite restore,
Where one plus one insists on being something more.
No walls collapse, no tyrant voice demands I stay,
Yet all departures subtly reorganize to “may,”
A system closed not by a lock but by a way
Of thinking space itself prefers to disobey.
And so I sit between departure and arrival,
A state that mimics both yet cancels their survival,
Where sanity becomes a question of archival—
What counts as real in circuits of recursive trial?
If there’s an end, it hides beyond the need to find,
For seeking is the loop that keeps me here confined,
A train, a bus, a thought I cannot leave behind—
A moving cage constructed out of my own mind.
Apr 7
Apr 7, 2026 at 12:59 AM UTC
The highway hums a weary psalm beneath my feet,
its dust a map of promises I couldn’t keep,
the dusk sinking low like a blessing I can’t repeat,
the wind confessing secrets in a rhythm slow and sweet,
and every mile reminding me why I still can’t sleep.
A semi groans past like a tired god shifting his frame,
its lights carving gold where the shadows creep,
and I raise my thumb though I know I’m the one to blame,
for carrying memories that burn hotter than flame,
while the road keeps its promises buried deep.
I follow the rails where the tall grass leans to pray,
their whispers soft as a grieving mother’s weep,
as a steel-lunged freight train rolls in, moaning gray,
its heartbeat shaking the moonlight in a trembling sway,
and calling me aboard in a language carved from sleep.
I climb its ribs, let the cold iron judge my hands,
feel the boxcar breathe like something ancient and steep,
past counties flickering by in half-forgotten lands,
past barns bowed low like men who can’t make stands,
while loneliness stacks itself inside me in a growing heap.
I think of you then—your voice a low river in June,
your laughter the only vow I ever meant to keep,
but the train moves on, deaf to the ache of any tune,
dragging my heart behind it like a shamed old moon,
and promises fall quiet when the memory’s steep.
A station appears in the dark, small as a held breath,
lamps buzzing amber while the broken windows peep,
and I leap from the car like a man outrunning death,
knees buckling under truths I thought I left,
yet the dirt still knows the secrets I fail to keep.
I walk again, searching for a song not soaked in pain,
humming low where the cattails bow and sweep,
but the night has no mercy for a soul thin as rain,
and the stars blink awake like they barely know my name,
their light falling off me in a scatter slow and cheap.
Still I go on, half ghost, half man, half prayer,
following the trembling road’s uneven beat,
for maybe salvation lives in the towns of thinner air,
or in the hope that sorrow can be carried if you’re aware,
that even the lost find kindness where sky and blacktop meet.
And if tomorrow comes with a softer shade of dawn,
I’ll greet it gently, though my wounds are deep,
for every mile traveled means another grief withdrawn,
another weary verse in the song I lean upon,
and maybe, just maybe, a little rest to keep.
Apr 7
Apr 7, 2026 at 12:44 AM UTC
The road bends like it always has,
stretching farther than the thoughts I carry.
Out here, you can lose yourself
in the hum of tires, the horizon,
the endless fields that never ask questions.
For years, I’ve let the wind be my map,
watched the lines blur, the towns dissolve
into mirrors of themselves.
I wore my freedom like a coat,
loose and light,
but heavy enough to keep me from feeling the cold.
Tonight, though, something has shifted.
The stars hang lower, closer,
like they’re trying to remind me of something
I once forgot.
I’ve been running, sure—
from walls, from doors, from the grip of anything
that might pin me down.
But the faces I left behind,
the voices, soft as the night air,
are calling me back,
quiet but insistent.
There are reasons now,
not a thousand, but more than enough,
to pull over, to turn around,
to let the road unwind behind me
instead of in front.
The wind will go on,
whispering its empty promises,
but I think tonight, I’ll go home.
Apr 7
Apr 7, 2026 at 12:11 AM UTC
I put my thumb out once—
or maybe it was always there,
hinged to the horizon like a question
that refused to close.
Cars passed. Or thoughts.
Headlights smeared into veins across the sky,
and every engine sounded like my name
said incorrectly.
I got in eventually—
I think I did.
The seatbelt tightened like a memory
I couldn’t prove belonged to me.
The driver never turned their head.
Their face was all rearview mirror,
and in it I kept arriving,
over and over, from places I hadn’t left.
We drove through towns that folded
like wet paper maps,
gas stations flickering between decades,
signs blinking words I almost understood.
I asked where we were going—
or maybe I asked when—
and the radio answered in a language
made of sirens and laughter slowed too far down.
Time didn’t pass.
It pooled.
It gathered in the footwell
around my shoes,
warm and humming.
At some point I got out—
I must have—
because I remember the road again,
longer now, and breathing.
My thumb was still out.
Or someone else’s was,
attached to an arm that moved
a second too late.
Every car that stopped
was the same one.
Every driver
almost turned to me.
I think I’ve been picked up.
I think I’m still waiting.
The sky keeps blinking,
like it’s trying to remember
what color it’s supposed to be.
Apr 5
Apr 5, 2026 at 1:17 PM UTC
There was a time when the days had edges—
clear beginnings, honest endings,
your voice somewhere in between,
steady as a hand on my shoulder
that I never thought to thank.
Now everything bleeds.
Morning arrives like an apology
no one speaks aloud.
I sit with it,
watching the light crawl across the floor
as if it’s searching for something it lost,
as if it remembers better than I do.
Even the sunlight feels secondhand now—
like it’s been somewhere warmer,
somewhere still full of voices,
before it found its way here
to this quiet that hums too loudly.
You used to fill the quiet
without trying.
Not with words—
but with the certainty
that nothing important would disappear
while I wasn’t looking.
I must have looked away.
Or maybe it was time
that blinked first—
closing its eyes just long enough
to take everything with it.
They left in pieces, you know.
Not all at once.
First the laughter—
it thinned out, stretched too far
until it snapped into silence.
Then the calls stopped coming.
Then the names started sounding unfamiliar
in my own mouth.
Then came the forgetting—
slow, merciful, and cruel.
The way faces blur at the edges,
the way voices lose their weight,
until all that remains
is the knowledge that something mattered
more than I can now prove.
I kept expecting footsteps,
a door opening,
some small, ordinary return—
but time does not return things.
It only teaches you
how to stand where they used to be.
How to breathe
in rooms that feel abandoned
even while you occupy them.
I walk through rooms
that feel like they’re remembering me wrong.
Everything is where it should be,
and still—
nothing is.
The walls hold their silence
like a secret they’ve agreed not to share.
Even echoes refuse to stay.
Even absence has begun to thin,
as if one day
there will be nothing left
to prove any of this ever happened.
Some nights I swear
I hear you in the next room,
just beyond the reach of waking.
Not speaking—
just being there,
like gravity.
Like something I depended on
without knowing it had a name.
I hold my breath
so I don’t scare it away—
that almost-presence,
that fragile illusion
that maybe loss is reversible
if I am quiet enough.
But morning always comes
and takes it back.
I don’t cry the way I thought I would.
It’s quieter than that.
More like a slow leak—
something essential leaving me
one unnoticed moment at a time.
A forgetting of how to feel fully,
as if grief has worn down the edges
of every other emotion
until joy itself arrives muted,
as though it’s afraid
of overstaying.
And the world—
it keeps moving.
Of course it does.
Cars pass.
People laugh.
Someone somewhere is beginning something
they’ll believe will last forever.
I watch them sometimes—
those people still untouched
by this kind of silence.
I want to warn them,
but there’s no language for it
that they would understand
before it’s too late.
So I say nothing.
I’ve begun to measure life
in what’s missing.
In empty chairs.
In numbers I no longer dial.
In the unbearable distance
between who I was
and whoever keeps waking up in my place.
I’ve started losing things
that aren’t even gone—
misplacing whole afternoons,
forgetting why I walked into rooms,
as if my mind is practicing
for a future
where even you will feel imagined.
And that is what terrifies me most—
not that you’re gone,
but that one day
it won’t feel like you were ever here.
If there is a place where you still exist,
I hope it is kind.
I hope it holds you gently,
the way I never learned to hold anything
without fearing its end.
I hope you are not aware
of how quietly everything unraveled here,
how absence spread
like a shadow with no source,
until it touched everything I knew.
As for me—
I am still here,
watching the days slip past
like water through open hands,
trying to remember
what it felt like
to think I could hold on.
Apr 2
Apr 2, 2026 at 11:24 AM UTC