The dusty yellow of sticky nectar
smears her face, opalescent,
the kind of glow you’d see in a dream
before it turns nightmare.
He sits across from her,
ambition cracked like the dry riverbed
of his father’s voice,
leaking out into the room,
spilling his senses in a game of tag
he will never win.

Their conversation is a war—
drones buzz overhead,
their bodies weightless as insects,
but the gore is real:
blood on the walls,
blood in the silence between
one bitter word and the next.
What did they fight for?
Pride? A crumb of it?
The thing dissolves like sugar
in a child’s fist—
sticky, stained,
but gone.

And at the end of it,
only children remain.
Not the ones they bore,
but the ones they still are:
small, angry,
married to a promise
no one ever explained.

They imagine pastures,
green as forgiveness,
wet as birth.
But the watering is endless,
the grass never grows.

It begins with a whisper,
soft as feathers brushing bone,
a murmur threaded with sweet venom:
You’re too much, you know that?
He says it like love, like it’s kindness
to clip the wings he gave me.

I laugh,
because that’s what you do when
someone you trust steps on your shadow,
calling it a game.
I laugh,
because his smile holds me hostage,
because my silence has become
the price of his calm.

And then it grows,
the laughter sharpens into teeth.
Each word dressed in humor
but hiding the sting.
You’re insane.
He says it with his eyes locked on mine,
searching for the fracture.
You believe anything, don’t you? Idiot.
And the room becomes smaller
as the air folds itself into shame.

I once thought trust
was a ribbon we tied between us,
a thread unbroken.
But he pulls it taut
only to watch me stumble,
to laugh as it frays
beneath the weight of his lies.

I was naive—
yes, that’s true—
to think love was a place of safety,
to believe his words were mine to hold.
But now, his laughter
hangs heavy in the corners,
and I wonder:
when did the joke become me?

It isn’t love
when your softness becomes his sport,
when he laughs at the tender parts
and calls it play.
It isn’t love
to twist innocence into a punchline
and leave the room echoing
with your shame.

But still,
he grins like the sun,
and for a moment,
I almost believe
it’s all in my head.

Ave Maria rings,

soft at dusk, the sky blushes,

hearts lift with the stars.