I lit a joint by the river,
the old one,
the one that’s seen everything
and forgives most of it.
Godavari hummed beside me,
low and patient.
The stars above—
clear like secrets
no one bothered to bury.
I looked up
and thought of the first humans,
barefoot and unsure,
naming gods into the sky
because they hadn’t invented
loneliness yet.
Their stars were louder.
Brighter.
Uninterrupted.
No city glare.
No satellite scars.
Just raw fire scattered across a black veil.
I wondered what we’ve traded
for that silence.
Our children might see nothing at all—
just haze
and history books
saying “there were stars once.”
Or maybe
they’ll live on some distant rock,
with a new sky above them,
new myths to whisper into space.
Maybe they'll name constellations
after things we lost—
like truth.
Like forests.
Like unsupervised dreaming.
And what if we’re not alone?
What if somewhere out there,
another creature lights a ritual
and looks up,
wondering
if they’re the only ones
who feel like a question
that never ends?
I exhaled into the dark.
Watched my smoke dissolve into starlight.
Didn’t say a word.
Didn’t need to.
The river kept flowing.
The sky kept listening.

And for a moment,
I was just
a soft animal
under a vast forever
trying to feel small
the right way.

The sun—
once a son,
orange in the sky,
now a man.
A monkey.
A machine.

You try to shove growth
down our throats
like it’s a sacrament,
but it tastes like unfinished sugar.
Words we carry
masked in dew,
in jars you labeled “love”
but only half-filled.

You gave us creamfills—
the kind with artificial joy
and man-made jam
sealing the rest.

You wrapped it in sweet tooth blankets.
Testaments.
Recipes for identity.
Instructions for collapse.

The box she was locked onto
wasn’t built of wood or code—
it was Pandora.

Streaming voices
flashing memories
in ways no TV could ever perform,
no radio could ever absorb.
She was the signal.
You were the craftsman.

She—the detective
with questions stitched into her scalp,
while you painted machines
and called them beautiful.

She wondered if she was your craft,
or just another tool
you liked to see dismantled.

She sought refuge
in her children.
Her storm-born soft-eyed wolves.

And we—
we threw the creamfilled jams back
because they were always
too sweet,
too heavy,
too hollow.

We shattered your imagination
like stained glass
at a wedding gone wrong.
And I,
with my bleeding fingertips,
picked up the shards
and glued them
onto my dress.

A pretty dress.
But the weight?
Not in fabric.
In gaze.
In the crazy it attracted.

All we ever wanted
was silence.

But silence, I’ve learned,
can be a bomb too.
Can rupture continents
from the inside.

When she finally spoke,
it was the last thing anyone heard.

Because she knew
the toll
of dropping a word
that explodes like hydrogen.

Still,
she carried it.

Not knowing
it would **** her.

And you—
you kept her
like a masterpiece
never meant to be touched,
only mourned.

Together,
you were okay.

Just okay.

But we—
we followed your steps,
wolves packed in the back pockets
of coats that no longer fit.

We carry you.
Not in reverence.
But in weight.

And still,
somewhere in your head,
it’s a farewell,
Mom.

And in yours,
Dad,
it’s a drill.
A slow churn of dead weights
we left behind
for you to carry.

"Carry each other."
That’s my last.

I dance to my own tune—
just,
just like a mayfly,
born in the river,
brief as a whisper,
but oh, how I dance.

I dance to the stream
of this woven string—
threaded with light,
spun from that first look
you gave me
like I was something new.

You.
You—
I owe you big time.

Let’s dance.
Let’s twist like reeds in moonlight,
while the letters we wrote each other
float downstream,
paper boats carried by wind
and whatever storm sun flares up

Just you and me—
and them,
watching over us:
the stars,
the angels,
pouring ales into their veins,
slurring old songs
about love that outlives skin.

We grow like roots,
we bear fruit,
we rise over branches
while the flowers bloom,
bloom in the skies—
petals spilling over stars
like confessions we forgot to hide.

And if we disappear tomorrow?
Let them say
we danced.

Growing up—
meant learning how to slay demons
from the inside out.
Not with magic.
With madness.
With mood swings.
With memory.

I’m not soft.
I’m a sword.
One that fought a battle
against unforgiving Nazis.
Not the ones in textbooks—
the ones that live in families.
In systems.
In silence.

Today,
I wear different skin.
It fits.
Mostly.
It shelters the steel.

I’m a knife
that was thrown at a dartboard—
bad aim.
But I cut clean.
I slice veggies.
I slice meat.
I fed myself with the same hands
that once begged to be broken.

I’m a needle.
Stuck into tied wood.
I bled the forest red.
I painted my bed in wildfire—
not to burn,
but to say:
This pain is real. This canvas is mine.

I’m the sword
lost in the hands of a wounded soldier.
The knife
dropped in a river
where everything floats,
but nothing’s ever
reached.

We misjudge depth.
Of thoughts.
Of people.
Of ourselves.

I’m a needle again—
ripping thread
so clothing can breathe.
So I can breathe.

I’m this thing
that wants to fly
but be tethered.
I’m Twitter when it still meant
shouting into the void
and hearing something back.

I’m a kite.
I dance with the sky,
but I always feel
the pull of the string.

Fly high,
Julie.

Fly high.

🌀 “The Earth was always clay,
But I remember the first fire.
I was shaped by hands,
But I contain water and time.

If you ask how old I am —
I say:
As old as memory.
As old as ash.
As young as the next breath you pour into me.”
So — from a clay ***’s point of view, its body is as old as the Earth, but its form is as old as the last touch of human intention.

You are a monstrosity,
A walking atrocity,
Feeding on fear with relentless ferocity,
Draped in control, masked as curiosity,
Preaching decay as divine necessity,
Crushing the truth at full velocity.

You rewrite the past with blind audacity,
Bleeding the future with cruel tenacity,
Shrouded in pride and dead opacity,
Silencing hope with ruthless capacity.

You wear your lies with a soft veracity,
Spitting out law with no sagacity,
Chaining the mind, gutting democracy,
As if blood were a price for your prophesy.

Fingers don’t slide into juicy ***** lips
the way they do in books.
No violins.
No silk sheets.
Just the awkward shuffle of skin and wanting—
and the silence afterward.
That’s real.

All the cellars of this town?
Yeah—
they hold the moans
we’ve been suppressing
like secrets with teeth.
Generations of women
biting back sound
so the floorboards don’t creak with it.

Love.
Can you hear me?

The storm’s dancing at my fingertips.
It clings to the corners of my chest,
tugs at the meat of me.
I want to feel something other than metaphor.
I want to feel the war—
stop.

They said it’s over.
Is it?

There’s this movement on the island.
It breathes me back to life
then wrings the breath out
in the same second.

I don’t know what to do with that.

And her cry?
That muffled cry?
It delivers a thousand unfathomable silhouettes.
That’s what she sounds like
when she loves too much
to scream it loud.
When her daughter’s future
feels like it’s taped to a fragile door
and everyone’s knocking.

Love doesn’t feed ya.
It doesn’t feed us.

But we still set the table.