The gun between us breathes,
a cold, metallic beast,
its weight heavy as grief,
a stranger we invited to dinner.
Your hand in mine—soft skin,
worn thin by apologies
neither of us has learned to believe.

Dusk seeps through the windows,
its light a bruise on the walls.
Shadows creep across your face,
your mouth opens—
a spilling, a flood of truths
that clatter like empty brass shells
on the wooden floor between us.

The gun hums its silence,
its voice louder than ours.
My fingers twitch but hold,
a grasp, a bond, a tether
to your trembling pulse.
Each confession lands—
a ricochet of blame,
love turned sharp-edged and unkind.

Outside, the world tilts,
a sky swollen with clouds
ready to burst. Inside,
the air thickens with secrets,
your eyes locked on mine,
begging for a forgiveness
that feels like treason.

The weight between us—
not just steel but history,
each wound, each lie,
each time we chose silence
over the truth that now bleeds
from our mouths,
red as dusk,
as irrevocable as the night
falling around us.

The words build up inside like a tumor,
Ignorance will make them mean—
Spare my heart / spare my lungs
The song 'What If' is on repeat.
Regrets of the past / fears of the future / anxiety of the present
A tumor never leaves—
Healing is temporary.
Coughing up blood / letters interlaced in red
It’s a disease to keep it inside,
It’s a curse to let them fly—
I must write outside of my skin.

Crashing waves roar loud,
white foam, rabid dogs' fierce growl—
shoreline bites the sky.

He stirs the dawn with the hum of the kettle,
Steam rising like ghostly whispers,
A quiet ritual of devotion—
The spoon clinks, the cup warms my hands,
His unspoken vows brewed dark and sweet.

Fingers weave through the chaos of my fevered hair,
A tenderness that binds more than braids,
Each twist a thread of solace,
A promise wound tightly,
As if to tether me to something steady.

His jacket, draped over my shivering bones,
Hangs heavy with his scent, his warmth,
A shield against the indifferent wind.
He never asks if I need it—
He simply knows.

Safety is not the fortress but the watchman,
The way his shadow falls across my fears,
How he sees what I cannot say
And says nothing,
Only lingers long enough to make the dark retreat.

These are the quiet revolutions of love,
Not grand, not loud,
But steady as the tide,
Small acts that hold me upright,
That stitch me whole.

Heart cast to the wind,
Yet your name haunts every breath,
Freedom's hollow curse.

I didn’t mean to let them go—
those words, quick and sharp
as shattered glass. They fell
between us, brittle echoes
splitting the air. I heard them
before they landed,
felt their weight twist my tongue,
knew they’d cut through
what we hadn’t yet finished weaving.

And still, you stood.
Not a wall, but a tree
rooted in wind.
Your breath was slow, deliberate,
a tide that didn’t rise
to meet the storm of me.
Your eyes held me—
not as something to punish
or praise,
but as something still learning
to soften.

Behind you,
your daughter sat silent,
her small frame
pressed into the edges of a room
too big for her understanding.
Not mine, but yours—
her love carried in the tilt of her gaze,
her trust braided into
the rhythm of your voice.
She doesn’t yet know
that words can be knives,
can bloom into scars
years later,
but she knows the way
your hands move—
slow, careful,
as if nothing in this world
is worth breaking.

I watch her watching you,
her young face
a map of wonder and inheritance.
And I wonder if she’ll see
how your quiet
isn’t silence,
but a language of its own—
the kind that teaches without telling,
the kind that steadies
without asking for praise.

Even now,
when I am the storm
tearing through our stillness,
you meet me
not with fire, not with force,
but with the weightlessness of water.
You press truth
into the hollow of my palms,
into the chaos of my mind:

We are not the words
we wish we could unsay.
We are not the wounds
we carry like heirlooms.
We are the spaces between the noise,
the quiet that stays
after the breaking.

I don’t know how to thank you—
not for your strength,
but for your refusal
to make it into armor.
For the way you hold love steady,
a flame too patient to flicker,
even when the wind rises.