Act I: The Universe Breathes, and I Am an Afterthought

I arrived late to existence,
billions of years after the stars had their golden age.
Missed the Big Bang,
missed the Renaissance,
missed the time when love letters were written on paper,
instead of reducing feelings to keystrokes.

They handed me a body,
a mind that questions too much,
and a world obsessed with carving meaning out of chaos—
as if Sisyphus hadn’t already proven
we’re all just rolling boulders uphill,
pretending not to notice the futility.

Act II: The Weight of Knowing, the Lightness of Forgetting

Socrates said, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”
I read that at 3 a.m. and felt personally attacked.
Descartes told me, “I think, therefore I am,”
but some days, I think too much and forget how to be.

History is a carousel of déjà vu,
spinning the same tragedies on repeat.
Empires fall, currencies crash,
trends resurrect themselves like poorly buried ghosts.
The Greeks feared hubris,
the Romans feared the barbarians,
I fear how meaning crumbles when no one is left to remember.

Act III: Beyond Meaning, Beyond Regret

Maybe Dante was right—
hell isn’t fire, it’s bureaucracy.
Maybe we’re just modern Stoics in overpriced hoodies,
romanticizing the art of being okay with things we can’t change.

Maybe meaning isn’t found in grand gestures,
but in the quiet absurdity of it all—
in watching the sun rise like it’s not exhausted,
in laughing at a joke older than Shakespeare,
in knowing that despite wars, collapses, heartbreaks, and lost civilizations—
someone, somewhere, still bakes bread from scratch,
still hums a song they don’t remember the name of,
still chooses to keep going.

Final Scene: To Exist Is to Hesitate, and Yet—

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
I’m still figuring out my why.
But in the meantime,
I’ll sip my coffee, watch the world spin,
and pretend I was always meant to be here.

i build walls,
thick and tall,
afraid of what might slip through,
afraid of what i might feel.

he touches the bricks,
his fingers gentle,
but i flinch,
afraid of the weight of love,
the pressure of it all.

i want to let him in,
but fear wraps its arms around me,
its grip so tight i can’t breathe.
how can i ask for something
i don’t know how to give?

still, i whisper the truth,
just a crack in the wall,
hoping he’ll hear me,
hoping he’ll understand
that i’m trying,
even when i can’t be all of me.

You who hold the light
in the soft sigh of twilight
where shadows whisper secrets
and the world bends
like a delicate petal,
i find you—
a fleeting thought,
a spark of laughter
dancing on the edge of silence.

maybe the dead
stick to us,
like stars caught in the fabric
of our skin,
weighing heavily
yet beautifully,
a tapestry of what was,
embroidered with longing.

pinch me before I wake,
like an egg yolk I gasp,
swallowed whole by this moment,
the sweet ache of remembering.
lay me down
in the unkempt grass,
where wildflowers
stretch their arms
to the sky,
and the earth
breathes
in colors of dusk—
let us lose ourselves
in this gentle chaos,
where time is a wound
that heals,
and love
is the only truth.

you—
the one who catches
the dark,
who holds the light
in trembling hands,
remind me
that even in silence,
i am not alone,
that in the weight of shadows,
we are still
a little bit
alive.

i spill like ink on a torn page
veins whisper stories
     i don’t remember
          writing
the floor drinks my silence,
a quiet agreement between
    blood and breath

who was i before the cracking?
before the splitting of skin
         and thought
before my name became a stranger
    i barely dare to call

the weight is a lover
     i never chose—
pulling me into the hollow
   of my own ribs,
where echoes curl like dying
          embers,
where i used to be whole

maybe it’s time to enter
          a white asylum,
surgical, controlled, safe—
     where no one can find me
perhaps my demons will fly away
     on black wings,
perhaps the walls will swallow
    my name

fingers press together scraps,
wet with glue, wet with something red,
but the edges won’t meet,
    the lines won’t hold

i am an afterthought,
    i don’t deserve love

step wrong and it all shatters—
the pulse, the breath,
       the brittle calm
i fake so well
how long does it take to disappear?
how long before the fire
     stops pretending
          to be warmth?

I watch the harbor through the falling snow
the sky and sea form one vast, gray tableau
the sun is nothing but a weak, background glow
the scene draws me, as if hypnotically.

Five mile’s lighthouse warnings go unvoiced
its strobes not lashing out, so what’s its point
it stands majestically but disappoints
replaced electronically

A tiny lobster boat makes its landward way
towards the inlet from the wider channel bay
a powdery blizzard is underway
which melts into the mirror sea.

Ospreys still hunt round the lobsterman's pride
snowflakes stain them as they soar and glide
other seabirds huddle side by side
shivering and crowing lividly.

Through the narrows the lonely boat steams
past icy Luddington Rock and East Breakwater's breech
its berths and moorings, within minutes reach
and sadly, it’s time for me to leave.
.
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Songs for this:
Far Far Away (Charles Tone Mix) [feat. Brenda Boykin] by Tape Five
Nobody by Mitski