It begins with a whisper,
not of air,
but of policy,
spinning.

The wall is old.
Painted over promises,
layered thick with
“later,”
“not yet,”
“it’s complicated.”

The drill hums, a mandate,
a motion passed in tired rooms,
a push into what resists
and always has.

Plaster flakes like paper ballots.
Behind it:
wires crossed,
beams bowed from holding too much weight
for too long.

This isn’t demolition.
It’s inquiry.
An attempt to find
what’s been hidden in drywall sermons
and insulation thick with slogans.

The silence after isn’t peace,
it’s waiting.
A breath before someone asks:
Who gave permission to open this up?

And someone else answers:
No one.
We just did.

A whisper pressed between two clockless thoughts,
I sent it sailing on the hush between atoms.
Did it find you? That feathered flicker
curled in the corner of a dream I wish to finish?

I stitched “hello” in the folds of a vanishing cloud,
where syllables drip like melted compass needles.
Are your shadows behaving?
Have your echoes found a place to hum?

Just blink twice if the rain still tastes familiar.
I’ll know.
I always read the tremble in the leaves.

I’m tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep could touch,
I mean marrow-tired. Soul-sick.
Like I’ve been screaming at walls
that were never meant to hear me,
only hold me in and mock me.

I watch the country gnaw itself to bone
while paper kings in thousand-dollar ties
sell truth by the gram
and war by the barrel.

There are flags on coffins,
hashtags on grief,
and filters on faces too scared
to show the cracks beneath.

The people have turned to teams,
red hats, blue waves,
fists clenched around identity
like it’s a weapon to survive the day.
But no one’s listening.
Just shouting louder in echo chambers
built by men who learned to profit from silence.

I’m tired of scrolling through manufactured lives,
where every grin is an ad,
every tear a performance,
every post a prayer to algorithms
that demand our attention,
then sell it to the highest bidder.

Tired of the news
that isn’t news,
just fear in fancy font,
a script rehearsed
by actors paid in outrage and ratings.

And beneath it all,
the quiet wars we wage alone:
Anxiety like barbed wire under the skin,
Depression curled in the corners of every room.
We medicate, meditate,
disassociate,
and wonder why we still feel hollow.

I don’t want unity like they market it,
some glitter-wrapped lie
where everyone smiles the same.
I want the kind of truth that scorches.
The kind that peels back illusion
like rot from fruit,
reveals the maggots we fed without knowing.

I want to scream until the stars hear me.
I want to tear down the golden idols
we carved from greed and call it legacy.
I want to see the empire fall,
not in flames,
but in awakening.

Because this country,
my country,
was not born from comfort.
It was carved by the calloused hands of rebels
who dared to dream louder
than the fear that held them.

So maybe I’m not just tired.
Maybe I’m done.
And maybe that’s where the fire starts.
Not with banners,
not with bombs,
but with one soul saying,
No more.

You were an enigma to me.
The one I always wanted,
But could never have.
Then, I got you.

The regret I feel...
is a shadow gnawing at the edge of every memory.
You weren't what I dreamed,
or maybe I wasn't who I thought I'd
be
standing beside you.

We smiled,
but it was muscle, not heart.
We touched,
but it was surface, not soul.
I mistook the silence between us
for a special thing,
but was really for a funeral I hadn't been brave enough to attend.

Now, when I think of you,
I think of winter,
bare trees clawing at a paper sky,
and a wind that doesn't care who it leaves behind.

Maybe we were meant to break.
Maybe some stars only burn long enough
to teach you what darkness really is.

I don't hate you.
I don't love you.
I simply remember,
yet even my memories are
tired now.

The ceiling peels in slow spirals,
not from neglect,
but from how long I’ve stared at it,
counting the flake’s hesitation before it drops.
The clock ticks without punctuation,
dragging each second like a dull knife
across something soft I used to need.

My limbs forget they’re mine
unless I remind them,
a muscle twitches,
a shoulder reconsiders its weight.
Even my name feels unstitched,
like a coat I keep meaning to throw away
but wear because it still remembers my shape.

Outside, birds call to each other
like they’ve never been tired,
like morning isn’t a decision.
Inside, I steep in low-level static,
a hum no one else hears,
thick as wool,
soft as resignation.

The walls still hum with what was said,
not in words, exactly,
but the way her eyes held silence like it was sharp.
I walk the length of the hallway barefoot,
each board creaking like it’s trying to confess
something I already know but won’t admit.

There is a hollow behind my ribs
where the idea of "us" used to echo,
but now it just folds inward,
a place not even memory wants to visit.
The kids slept through it.
Or maybe they didn't.
Either way, they are reasons and weights,
stars I orbit, unsure of my own mass.

I pour water and watch the surface still.
It doesn't feel like peace, just quiet.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Sometimes it’s not.
I don’t know which tonight is.
I just know I’m tired,
and tired doesn’t mean I’m done.

I remember the graves, the hush of the rain
Soft as a whisper, sharp as our pain
We wandered through rows where the cold marbles slept
And sorrow, like ivy, around us had crept

You walked beside me, apart yet the same
Two leaves on a stem no storm could reclaim
We spoke with our silence; the sky read our script
Gray as the truth that we both tightly gripped

I’d loved you for years but silence I wore
A coward’s confession behind a closed door
That hush was my thunder, my shadowed regret
For I saw in your stillness what you never said

Your burden was deeper, your youth left behind
To cradle your brothers, to steady their minds
Your father a ghost with a bottle for breath
And you, the lone lantern fending off death

We sat by the well, cracked stone and decay
A ruin forgotten by sunlight or day
And somehow, your hand found mine in the dusk
As soft as a prayer, as quiet as trust

We looked at each other, no questions, no schemes
Just truth in a moment that softened the seams
You smiled, I smiled, and time lost its thread
Then we kissed where the living still speak to the dead
And nothing existed beyond what we knew
That sorrow had brought me forever to you

We sat in the rain as the silence returned
But softer now, like the ache had been learned
No words were exchanged, yet something had grown
We felt a bit lighter, a little less alone