I bite.
Not with teeth.
with silence,
with sharp glances,
with walls built higher than your reach.

I’m not cruel.
I’m just tired
of being kind first
and torn apart second.

You call it attitude.
I call it armor.
Because being soft
never saved me.
It only made the fall hurt more.

So I speak less now.
Agree less.
Trust less.
I pull away before someone has the chance
to walk out first.

It’s not that I don’t want love.
I’ve learned that even “I care about you”
can come with conditions.
Even soft hands
can leave bruises
you can’t see.

I bite
because once,
I didn’t.
And it nearly broke me.

. (or: when I heard my voice come from his mouth) .

At first, it was flattery—
the way he wore his collar the same way I do,
the way he started lighting my brand of cigarettes,
the way his laugh hit the same register
I used to throw like a knife across rooms.

I caught him reading my journal once—
not with guilt, but reverence.
“I like the way your thoughts bleed,”
he said, closing the leather cover like scripture.

He stopped asking me questions.
He already knew the answers.

My shirts disappeared one by one.
Then my habits.
Then my silences.

I watched him pour bourbon
with the same three-count I perfected in 1994.
Watched him cross his legs just so,
quote my warnings back to me
as if they were lessons he taught himself.

He ****** me like a rehearsal.
And I let him—God help me—
because some part of me believed
that to be repeated is to be remembered.

But memory is a shallow grave.

One night,
he answered the phone with my cadence.

“This is he,” he said—
voice dry as an autumn branch.
And for a second,
even I believed him.

I didn’t confront him.
I just started talking less.

He filled the air like a flood.
My presence became parentheses.

In bed,
he started calling me old man—
not as a kink,
but as a countdown.

I smiled.
But it tasted like rust.

The boy I devoured
was digesting me back.

And prophecy, that silent ******,
licked its lips
and kept watching.

Nothing can grow in the darkness                                                         ­            and that's why you've become so heartless                                                        ­                                             In  hibernation licking wounds of rejection                                       unable  to face your mirrored reflection                                               You've  planted poison ivy in your garden of pain                                                             ­                                           that  flourished turning the vines into chains                                now  you've grown with roots so deep                                                           unable to sow, unable to reap

There once was a child with too many things—
a box full of buttons, a bird made of strings,
a hat that belonged to a father now gone,
a watch that still ticked but the hour was wrong.

She carried them all in a bag on her back,
each item a whisper, a worry, a crack.
No room for a coat, no space for a friend—
just memories packed without start, without end.

A pebble from rivers she never walked near,
a note with no sender, a name she held dear.
She lugged it through summers and staggered through snow,
refusing to leave what had once helped her grow.

One day she met someone who carried no sack.
He smiled and said, “You could put some things back.”
She frowned and said, “But these are my keeps.”
He nodded and asked, “And which ones still speak?”

She opened the bag and began to let go—
a feather, a fork, a torn shadow of woe.
Not all, but a few. Just enough to stand tall.
Her back learned to breathe, and she started to fall—

into walking, not dragging. Into days made of now.
The road felt like song. She forgot the old how.
She still kept a key and a small silver bell—
but she learned not all stories are hers to retell.

1.) Beautiful and mysterious like a tulip.

Supple, yet smooth you flow as the wind.

What sort of creature is this? I asked!

She is "Anna", they replied.. in a ridiculous manner.

2.) Thou shall not be frail, let not your eyes turn pale!.

Courage, you coward! And overcome your fears.

I am but a lost lad, the worst of all men!

This creature you call a woman, will forever be my best nightmare.

If wishes were chickens, beggars would eat.
But life is not a bed of roses.
Oh! How I wish it were.