I don't know what to call You.
"Father," which should denote familiarity,
seems a foreign word to me.

Lips together, pressed,
as if you were the one dead,
"Wake up"-your only prayer,
but death doesn't care.
Now you can only choke,
on words you never spoke.

I want to believe in steady things,
but even my own reflection changes
when I look too long.
Are you here?
Do you love me?
Will you stay?
I ask without asking,
watching for the answer
in the way your hands move,
the way your breath hesitates before a word.

I know I feel too much,
ask too much,
but the silence between us is louder
than anything I could say.
So I fill it.
With words, with fear, with love—
all spilling over,
all too much,
all at once.

And still, I wonder, if it’s enough.

a cat, they say
both dead and alive, in a sway
trapped in the box
become a metaphysical paradox

a flask of death, a trigger tick
a game of chance, so cold, so sick
they call me life, they call me death
but no one asks to hear my breath

a man, I say
become the halfway
let his atoms hum and twitch
become the theorist’s broken glitch

see how you like the in-between
will you then be so keen
maybe then you’ll see the cost,
see the life lost

seal the box, install the locks
put a man in that box

there’s an
impostor
in the mirror
and she has
my smile.

a raging river
of thoughts,  a stream of words — the
rest flows out as tears