And I remember thinking—
I wish someone would look at me that way.
As if they had battled it for a lifetime,
Through seasons and snow and sun -
Across cities and oceans and mountains
In innocent youth and wearied age,
As if they had finally surrendered and had no choice but to look.

In the way it takes all a person’s will and strength to look away
And they have been worn down, beaten, bruised
To the point of weakness, of giving up.
And now, all they are left with is their truest self, exposed down to the bone
& no strength to battle the inevitable
Draw of their eyes to mine.

I want someone to look at me as if I am their lifeline,
And their death-bringer.

Chapter 1: Red Dust and Neon Ghosts

Mars had been humanity’s first dream of escape.
By 2133, it was little more than a cosmic cul-de-sac — a cracked monument to ambition, left to collect dust and bad poetry.

The Youngston Gate had changed everything. Now ships skimmed the edges of the solar system in days, not years. Stars called louder than Mars ever could. The Red Planet, once sacred, became a punchline.

Mann’s Olympus Casino and Hotel clung to the slopes of Olympus Mons like a bad tattoo nobody could laser off, buzzing defiantly under a layer of drifting rust.

Named after Robert J. Mann — a man whose ego once rivaled the mountain itself — the casino was now a hospice for broken dreams. Its letters flickered in and out: “M _ _ N’S OL _ _ P _ _”, blinking like tired eyelids trying to stay awake during a boring sermon.

Inside, the smell of old synthetic whiskey, burnt insulation, and Red Velvet opioids poisoned the recycled air. Gravity stuttered just enough to make every step feel like drunken prayer. The carpet peeled, the walls wept condensation, and the neon wept more quietly still.

Most of Mars' remaining human inhabitants weren’t here for the scenery.
They lingered like soggy parade confetti — forgotten, grimy, and too much trouble to sweep away.

The last act of the night was a woman whose name had once meant something —
Elaine Moon.

Chapter 2: Reflections in a Cracked Mirror

Elaine Moon sat backstage under a bank of vanity lights that buzzed like tired flies.
The mirror showed not a starlet, not even a relic — but something more stubborn.

She was fifty-something — she'd stopped counting when years became background radiation.
Her fingers ached with old betrayals: high kicks performed for half-interested audiences, songs mouthed for drunk nostalgics, bows for ghosts.

Once, when Mars still sold dreams, Elaine had been electric — breathing messy life into AI legends who had been programmed to shine but never sweat.
She had been a bridge, a mockery, a prayer disguised as a punchline.

But nostalgia rots faster than hope on a dying planet.

Tonight, staring into the cracked mirror, she realized something different.
Elaine Moon had been a necessary lie.

Beneath the layer of foundation and forced grins, the truth stirred:

Sarah Glover.

She wiped away the makeup — not neatly, not delicately. Just wiped. Like peeling away a dead skin.

Sarah.
Who once sang real songs in ***** crater bars, drunk on cheap wine and younger lungs.
Who once believed her voice could make the stars ache.

She had been buried beneath years of survival.
Not tonight.

Sarah Glover stood up from the chair.
No fanfare.
No safety net.

Just her own cracked voice waiting to be used honestly, one last time.

Chapter 3: The Last Song on Mars

The stage was a rectangle of failing light floating above a swamp of dim, unbothered shadows.
Gravity sighed at every step, pulling unevenly at her boots.
The air smelled like old plastics trying to pretend they were still new.

Sarah — not Elaine, never again Elaine — stepped into the wan spotlight.

No announcement.
No persona.

She leaned into the mic, rough and real:

"I'm Sarah."

A few heads lifted, blinking slowly as if trying to remember if they should care.

She keyed the battered synth, its panels held together by duct tape and stubborn hope.
It coughed out a C-major chord like a mechanical death rattle.

And Sarah sang.

Her voice cracked like dry riverbeds.
It floated unevenly, stuttering against the stale casino air.
But it was alive.

"Dust forgets the footprints it holds.
Stars bleed themselves dry for nothing.
And still, we sing."

Her fingers fumbled the bridge, and she laughed — a real, sharp, unsweetened laugh — before weaving her voice back into the crumbling melody.

The casino lights dimmed as she finished —
like dying fireflies giving up the fight.

A single clumsy clap echoed from somewhere in the back, colliding awkwardly with the silence.

Sarah bowed — not to the burnouts, not to the ruins, not to the drunk ghosts of memory —
but to the stubborn ember inside herself that had refused to go out.

Behind her, Elaine Moon crumbled like the dust she had always imitated.

Ahead of her, Mars stretched on — empty, tired, waiting for nothing.

Sarah Glover stepped into the neon-soaked dark, the hum of dying signs trailing behind her like a broken lullaby.

Somewhere beyond the Youngston Gate, humanity sprinted into new mistakes.
But here, on a broken rock under a leaking sky,
one true voice had risen, trembled, and vanished.

And for once,
that was enough.

They say the world was once dry.
No rivers split the land. No lakes gathered in valleys. No rain ever kissed the soil. The earth was quiet, and the sky above it colder still.

Then came the First Mourner.

No one remembers their name. Some say it was a woman who lost her child. Others say a man, left behind by a village that forgot him. Some say they weren’t man or woman at all, but simply the first soul to carry grief too large for the body that held it.

Alone beneath a sky that did not know feeling, the First Mourner fell to their knees and wept.

One tear, then another, and another—until the ground beneath them softened. The soil drank deeply. The sky, curious, watched.

This was a new thing: sorrow.

Moved by this strange sound—the hitching of breath, the trembling hands—the sky tried to answer. But the sky did not know how to weep. So it watched. It waited. And it learned.

And when the Mourner's final tear fell, a spring bubbled forth where their grief had sunk deepest. It sang gently, like a lullaby hummed to no one. And the sky, trembling with this strange new knowing, let fall a single drop of rain.

That was the first covenant.

For every true sorrow shed by humankind, the sky would return a drop of rain. Not as punishment, but as an echo. Not to drown, but to nourish.
And so the lakes formed. The rivers wandered. The oceans, deepest of all, came from grief shared across generations—wars, famines, partings too large for one voice alone.

The world wept with us, and in this we were not alone.

But sorrow, like all things, changed.

In time, humans no longer wept from love or loss alone. Their sadness became tangled in wanting—more, faster, again. They wept for things they hadn’t lost, or things they never had. They learned to sell their sorrow, to rehearse it, to package it in song and screen and market. They cried in chorus without meaning a note.

The sky, still faithful, tried to respond.

It poured down rain onto lands that did not need it. It soaked the hungry with flood and left the earnest dry. It became confused. Where once it had known the shape of sorrow, now it only heard noise.

The waters turned.

Oceans rose not from mourning, but from error. The rivers changed course. Some vanished. Some boiled. Rain fell without rhythm, or not at all. The world, overwhelmed, began to dim.

They say the sky tries not to listen now. That it closes its eyes when it hears us speak. That the wells are drying because the grief we give them cannot be trusted.
And where once fire was rare, now it walks freely across the land—because there are no honest tears left to hold it back.

But not all have forgotten.

There are still those who feel sorrow, and do not turn it into spectacle. Who weep alone, without audience or applause. Who rise—not to perform, but to mend.
They do not beg the sky to stop crying. They do not curse the flood.
They walk where the water has receded and begin again.

They pull weeds. They clean wounds. They carry buckets.

They speak to children in low tones. They listen to the old without impatience. They do not sell their mourning. They do not bottle their grief.

The world watches them—warily, quietly, hopefully.

And when they pass beneath the clouds, the rain waits.
Not because it is confused.
But because, for once, it remembers why it ever fell.

I am not a poet.

My words were never made for the masses,
Made to pry emotions from your heart.
Rhyme can sometimes leave me at a loss,
And my inkwell is more often empty than not.

I am not a poet.

I can write only what I know and feel,
Each poem I give a little piece of me.
Every line is just a wisp away from existence.
Each poem might just be the last I write.

I am not a poet.

Yet why do you feel like my muse?
Your eyes remind me of a thousand places,
Like sea glass glinting green in the hush of tide.
Your voice has its command over my pulse.

I am not a poet.

But poetry you are.
How else do I describe this feeling,
If not with flowery words and rhyme.
And yet no words can hold it right.

I am not a poet.

I would be lost if I were.
For if I give a piece of me,
It will always be here in this poem,
With You.

I got lost today in the women's hips
they were moving with feminine wild grace in the heat
I was lost in the subway's speed when a woman asked:
"Where did you get those shoes", "how lovely they are"
"From a small fair on the banks of a lake", I replied
"Oh, I just got back from Caprile the other day"
"I hate you", she said and she laughed
I got lost in her blue dress, I reciprocated
the sweetness of her smile

silence swings over waters as if...
it rehearses its unseen so...
to fill  in the depth of blanks
a stratified time inhabits the landscape
orphic dreams morph into your flesh
the wind collates its courage and rage
like someone who falls into a self
my words bite the shape of a scream
the hunger of love descends language into crumble
the beauty of lungs full of air is misleasing
when I am waiting for silence to miscarry its void

Struggling to hold a job down?
Everywhere you turn, the same cold line-
“We’re going a different direction.”

“Clearly it’s your fault. You’re not doing it right.
Keep pushing those resumes. Practice your interviews…”

Looking for alternatives - experience, maybe some money?

“Just get a job. Quit being so lazy.”

Hit financial walls while scraping together a life for your baby?

“Clearly, you’re not fit to be a parent.
Simply give your child away.”

You say you trudged through dirt, sweat, and tears...
But help was always a phone call away.
While I wait eight hours on hold just to hear:
“The office hours have closed. Please try your call again later”

“I’ve struggled. I’ve gone through hell and back.
I threw prayers that filled empty air…”

The list goes on.

But when I stumble and fall, all I hear is:
“Get up.”
“You’re just lazy.”
“Give your child away. You can’t care for him.”

Keep throwing your stones from your "cushy" lives.

I’ll show you.
You've seen me do it before

I’ll take your stones and build a fortress-
One forged from “can’t”, “lazy”, and “you’ll never make it.”

Add wood to my fire. Add stones to my palace.
Every doubt you toss becomes part of my legacy.

Because in this permanent rat race,
I won’t surrender.
I’ll rise above
And he’s staying with us

We'll make it, we simply have to
A child needs his family and that's just what I'll do
With- or without you