she kissed me once,
in the dark corner of a bar
nobody we knew would ever walk into.
her hands were trembling,
but her lips—
god, her lips knew exactly
what they wanted.

and for a moment,
I let myself believe
she could be mine.
just for a moment.

she pulled away like she’d been caught,
looked around
at all the strangers who didn’t care,
who didn’t even see.
but she saw them.
she saw their eyes in her head
even when they weren’t looking.

“this can’t happen,” she said,
like it hadn’t already.
like I wasn’t sitting there,
still tasting her on my mouth.
“you don’t understand,” she said,
and maybe she was right.
because I didn’t understand
how you could feel something that big,
that loud,
and still pretend
you didn’t.

but I didn’t fight her.
I just nodded,
because I’d seen this before.
not with her,
but with others like her—
women who carried love
like a smuggled thing,
hidden deep in their pockets,
afraid to let it see the light.

she called me late sometimes,
when the fear wasn’t as strong
as the wanting.
we’d meet in motel rooms
on the edge of town,
where the curtains were thick
and the walls were thin.

and in those moments,
she was alive—
all fire and ache and need.
but when the sun came up,
she’d be gone before I woke,
like a ghost
afraid of being caught in the daylight.

I told her once,
“you don’t have to live like this.
you don’t have to hide.”
but she just shook her head
and said,
“not everyone is as brave as you.”

brave.
what a word for it.
it didn’t feel like bravery.
it felt like ripping myself open
over and over,
waiting for her to decide
she was ready to step out of the shadows.

but she never did.
she stayed in her closet,
her church pew,
her tight little box of shame.

and I stayed outside,
watching the door,
waiting for it to open.
but it never did.

he told me:
“addiction is just gravity.
you try to climb out,
but it pulls you back,
over and over.
at some point,
you stop fighting.
you call it home.”
then he wiped his nose,
snorted another line,
and laughed.
like gravity was a joke
only he understood.

In the bruise of neon twilight,
do you hear the murmurs of fallen titans?
Our weary hands hold forgotten keys
to rusted kingdoms of hope and decay.

We reforge legends in alleyway sermons,
where ancient echoes meet the hiss of rain -
fables of sunken gods and exiled warriors,
whispered between shattered, heartfelt beats.

Have you tasted the bitter lips of revolt,
the raw nectar of midnight confessions?
In these rain-soaked streets, truth is a bruised bloom,
unfurling amid broken glass and smudged lore.

Fathers rasp secrets from battered concrete,
while mothers dissolve in industrial shadows

our pulse, a ragged hymn echoing
through streets carved by forgotten revelries.

We huddle beneath a fractured moon,
where graffiti speaks the language of rebellion,
and every scar in the city is a stanza
in our relentless, aching poem of survival.

Grant us a stolen hour
to celebrate wild, desperate art
to clutch the tender flames of our revolt,
even as we wade through urban ashes
in defiant, hopeless grace.

Sometimes the past slips away -
a dream that never was.
But the wanting stays,
like a ghost in the hallway.
We carry it,
each step a little lighter.

I feel like it’s better to listen than talk
And faster to run, though it’s wiser to walk
A field to be tilled
Or a cup yet unfilled
For this is the way of the unsculpted rock