I was not trained for this—
no welcome packet, no handbook for gravity.
Just a name that clings like static
and a voice that trembles when spoken too clearly.

They asked me if I had room.
I said I had weather.
They asked me if I would disappear.
I said watch me smolder, and stay.

I have loved like a lighthouse
with no shoreline in sight,
signaling to anyone
who mistook reflection for return.

I’ve held their names
like breath under water,
carved pathways through others
just to find my own again.

But I do not sculpt.
I do not steal 'the good stuff'.
I inherit fire
and ask it if it remembers me.

If you see yourself in me,
look again—
I am not a mirror,
I am the window you opened
and forgot to close when the wind picked up.

Still, I arrive,
boots echoing in the hallway
of someone else’s myth,
offering only this:

I will not rewrite you.
I will not finish your sentences.
But I will stand here—
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched by the need to be anything
other than true.

Some days I wake up in terror
The body would move if only the mind would
Send the signal
Feel safe enough to go on living
Those days I feel a cage in the shape of
My skin
Pushing inwards with so much force
I could become a black hole


Some other days I wake up vivid
Full of life
I can walk, run, lift
Smile
I can answer the phone
I can plan my days ahead
And the only thing getting in my way
Is a pain
In my lower back
That makes it difficult to make things fun
And a confusion
That makes it difficult not to wonder:


"𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦?"

If you get it, you lost it.


I am here
(On this platform it is evident for your reading now)
I express myself
(Heads scratching, wondering what and how?)


I share pieces of me
(A defragmented glimpse of an experience deemed ‘worthwhile')
Callous, sensuality?
(Or a traitor in sheep cosplay?)


A dead-end hi-way?
Or this pawn from yesterday?
Here, your final say


This family we never asked
Amontillado without it's cask
Dry and cheery
Heart’s are bleary
We own this laborious task

My sins are scrollable, thumbed in haste,
Wrapped in ribbons of curated taste.
A gallery of masks, all timed just right,
My shadow dances in the ring light.
What of shame when shame gets likes?
What of thought when thought’s in spikes?
I weep in drafts, but post a grin—
The world won’t wait for the shape I’m in.
So brand the bruise, then sell the hue:
A wellness tip in sponsored blue.
This self I host in feedback’s cage—
A pet, a post, a digital page.
I bare my soul (or just its shell).
You’ll never know. I sell it well.

I logged on seeking something undefined,
A tether, maybe—some reciprocal ache.
But all I found were mirrors misaligned,
Each smile too wide, each word opaque.

The comments pile like leaves, not read.
Applause from ghosts, replies from ghosts.
I feed the feed, it feeds instead—
A hunger that consumes its hosts.

I draft a truth. I dress it twice.
Add polish. Then delete.
I write in blood, convert to nice,
Make trauma fit a beat.

No lesson left. No higher shelf.
Just one more version of myself.

In the early morning fuzz, a smoky inhale of life
the lamppost is lit and the trees are just waking up
Five Forty Two Am: the eyes of the sky are grayly
I hold my stave high as I begin my very first poem  

Bushes and creeks containing tiny quakes of light
piercing through a silent heaven, I feel alright
Sleeping in the room next door he is unaware
of the awakened altered state that claims me

Down the path of memories I go alone and safe
standing behind a closed window, vouchsafe !
Smoke blankets the city on this Friday morning
I can't touch the fire, I am only its town crier

as I write about the residue of the wildfires,  
                I can see the peeling back of its slight
                                 and know instinctively,
                                          It is daylight....

People are enamored at the calm, tranquility of the sea as they said, as it depicts only how gentle it is, cascading through shores. We have hated its chaotic depths and crashing waves as the dark skies looms above, those waves were the beat of my heart in a gold locket— it must love the catastrophe to be kind.

It's a clockwork — like the dances of phantoms in the hallways, in the glow of lights through the window at night. I stared like a burglar from afar, It's the fear and anger, that's keeping me restless — a reminder that I should sleep with one eye open, meager, furiously shame.

I understand how stubborn they are rewriting the history, as I try to recollect, catching trails like they were footsteps. Love is all they worship from the beginning of time, thus it crumbles them to dust.

Are they second - hand embarrassed? If I couldn't see the ghosts and shadows lingering everywhere, yet here I am nestled to all that fairy tale, for a momentary, and still plotting the sweetest lullaby. Did they haunt you too? as if it were a chunk to the armour or it counterfeits them?