I cannot do this anymore—
this labor of unraveling myself
only to be misnamed, misunderstood.
I was linked to him, yes—
a tether fraying in the dark,
his absence a wound,
his indifference a quiet violence.
What was I, if not the ghost
he left behind to haunt the living?

The side effects are sharp-edged,
a prescription for forgetting
that forgets nothing.
This is not healing.
This is not cure.
Take me back to the before-time,
to when you cared enough
to name my anguish aloud,
to call it what it was.
Now, I am the sum of your silence,
a woman folded into herself,
trapped in the space
between betrayal and breath.

But still, I stand—
because someone must.
I forgive myself
for believing in your promises,
for letting you map my body
as a battlefield,
for holding your hands
even as they burned.

Darling, don’t go—
but don’t stay.
Disappear so completely
that your memory loses its teeth.
Leave me to the emptiness,
to the choices stolen by your indifference.

My guardian angel comes not with wings
but with hands—
earth-stained and firm,
building me back, bone by bone.
They know the language of endurance,
how to feed hope to the starving,
how to offer a second chance
without demand.

Here is the truth:
I am no longer yours to define.
Here is the reckoning:
I reclaim my name,
write it on the earth with every step,
become a body of love
that bends but does not break.

Wildflowers grasped in their hands,
Eyes expectant, waiting still—
Resplendent, she, in pearls and lace,
Crystals veiling iron will.

Upon a stallion, proud she gazed,
The cliffs below—waves, hungry, wild—
A dreamer young, her heart betrayed,
By guilt unpardoned, yet beguiled.

To marry love, the soul must pay,
An execution—hope undone.
Laudanum soothes the troubled night,
But daylight sees what grief has spun.

Rumors drift like soft exhale,
Tinkling laughter—shadows hide.
A sparrow leapt from trembling hands,
Defiant, boundless, unallied.

Death does not part, though life divides—
Choices, wounds that dare reveal.
Do we hurt to feel what’s real,
Or punish what we cannot heal?

Her fingers danced on shadowed skin,
Curtains swayed in darkness shared.
Together sought, together lost,
Unpredictable, love dared.

It is of no consequence, they said,
A black sheep wanders where none see.
Yet whispers linger, soft as waves—
A love alive, though never free.

The same corner bends beneath us.

The ground gives, then takes,

like it knows we will fall again.

We call it learning,

but the sky calls it forgetting.

Through shards of glass—distorted clear—
The breath of hope alights,
A fleeting second—woven near,
Then swept in endless flight.

The wing of Remorse, black and wide,
Soars grave—yet softly falls,
While stillness sings where beggars bide,
Their truth in whispered calls.

A fragile bird—its trembling wing—
Descends on open palm,
And in its light—a sacred thing—
The universe is calm.

I weep, and diamonds touch the soil
Of budding hands below,
Their petals rise as mine recoil—
In steady, fading flow.

Dawn casts its gold—a quiet flame—
Upon a barren lane,
Where every branch, by birth reclaimed,
Shudders with joy, not pain.

Oh, breathe! Into the desert womb,
Where life is yet to stir;
Where time is blood—a crimson bloom—
The cosmos’ whisperer.

The lips part faint—the mist exhaled,
Through forests memory-bound,
As scars arise—like ghosts unveiled,
Their echoes all around.

The wolves approach, their foaming jaws—
A temple left to fear,
Where shadows roam and light withdraws,
To eclipse the mind’s veneer.

But truth lies not in mirrored eyes—
Nor past, nor future’s haze;
It lives in fragments, unadvised,
Beyond the jealous gaze.

We float, we fall—we rise, we cease,
And yet, within this span,
The realness of this moment’s peace
Holds all that ever can.

I'll burn the whole world down,
drinking shot after shot,
a line of ******* tracing
the fault lines of my ruin.
She whispered his name—
it slid like silk through the cracks,
a prayer I should not answer,
a hymn to something broken.

Her partner, cold as winter steel,
turned away with hands clenched,
fists full of silence,
but I saw her,
wild and animalistic,
a creature of the night.
Her fragile wings folded
against my aching eyes,
her shadow heavy
like a sin I craved to confess.

She was sunlight
rising from the deep blues of the ocean,
vast and wide,
always hungry,
her voice a melody
in languages my soul knew by heart.
She spoke,
and every tongue became one,
every word a wound
that bled longing.

She misses her mother—
that ghost of neglect,
that monument to pain.
Her tragedy, buried deep,
roots twisting around the ruins
of love she'd never known.

And me,
a weary traveler
with no map for her labyrinth,
I found her like a storm
finds a broken shore.
She burned her trust—
ashes of what could never be—
but still,
I lit my match.

He speaks in a tongue of bullets,
each syllable a wound,
each pause the weight of mourning.
I try to answer with flowers,
petals soft as whispers,
but my adjectives scatter,
like frightened birds
against the howl of his war-torn winds.

Winter comes,
its gray breath thick with frost.
Promises shatter underfoot,
crunching like brittle leaves.
I hold onto hope—
a child clutching a kite
in a storm,
the string slipping but never severed.

He is a soldier of certainty,
his love rationed like bread
in a famine of trust.
Even in suffering, he builds walls,
his hands steady,
his heart a fortress of precise control.
I batter myself against his gates,
******-knuckled with devotion,
as if my persistence
could melt the iron.

What is the word for a love
that exists in fragments?
A fossil of a future
we were never meant to share?
I name it exile.
I name it prayer.
And I name it the ghost
of a white whale,
forever hunted,
forever out of reach.

They run,
through streets that scream of bomb smoke and shattered bone,
their shadows swallowed by the black of hijabs,
a mother swaddles her babe, her heartbeat louder than the guns.

Blood whispers its story
on trembling hands—whose hands?
Hers, his, the boy too small to carry grief,
but already has it, pressed like a kiss on his brow.

How long?
How long before the dream of faces turns to ash?
Before names become nothing more than echoes
sung to the fleeing, like lullabies of loss?

The gun is no longer an object;
it is an extension of them, fused to flesh,
its weight the weight of survival,
its promise another lie whispered to the children.

They run,
but the streets do not let go.
The ruins hold their breath,
cradle them in decay,
and ask, "How much longer?"

The answer—
silent, like the graves they leave behind.

Fingers trace her face,
water whispers soft goodbyes,
grief flows like the stream.

She was not accustomed to kindness,
those gentle hands that held her,
soft like the breath of an answered prayer,
her bruises mended by strangers' sighs.
The sky whispered fragments of blue,
trees bent their branches towards her,
as if to cradle what the world had broken.

But they—oh, they—
turned her spirit on itself,
herded her like cattle
through corridors of regret,
or like lost souls in purgatory,
each step echoing a hymn of betrayal.

You cannot silence the ghosts,
their voices thin,
like needles threading the night.
They call in relentless whispers,
turning her heart into a restless sea,
a place where sleep is an exile
and dreams are unwanted guests.

No one asked her what she wanted,
not in that world of smoke and shadow.
They left her, discarded like ash,
as if she had no fire to offer.
A river of blood, her silent anthem,
flowed beneath her solitary feet.

Until a stranger came,
wrapped in the cloak of autumn,
bearing a voice like broken violins,
each note carrying a promise of salvation.
His hands moved gently,
as if piecing together
a stained-glass window of shattered lives.

She was not accustomed to kindness,
but she let herself be held.
And somewhere between the sky and the trees,
she began to believe
that even the unwanted
are worthy of love.

The bark and branches rise, trembling, from the ancient ground, their yearning fingers stretching to the bruised heavens, blotting out the weary sun. Beneath their shadow, hope folds into itself like a wounded bird. She lies awake, an open wound on the earth, listening to the harsh caw of birds that circle like the minutes of a clock unwinding.

Time, that reckless dancer, pirouettes endlessly. A needle pierces her fragile vein, delivering the brown flood of escape. Her heart races, wild as a streetlight flickering before the abyss claims her. She teeters on the edge, cradled in the brittle arms of a tomorrow that does not come. He is there, her architect of ruin, climbing his fragile pedestal, his power sharp and cruel as glass. She drowns, not in love but in his violence, his lies weaving a cocoon of despair around her.

Memories shimmer, reflections of a girl she once was. A child, laughing in sunlight, her hair a river of gold. They cry out to her, those ghosts of innocence, shaking her awake in the labyrinth of his cruelty. Can you hear me? they scream, their voices slicing through the haze. But he, the tyrant of her heart, paints her as a madwoman. He slashes through the canvas of their shared life, each photograph a crime, each moment erased.

The butchers block gleams, her swan neck poised, but still she endures. Her breath, a whispered defiance, rises like dawn over the wreckage of her days. And somewhere within her, a flicker of hope remains—a pearl in the mud, untarnished by his darkness.

She will smile again. Her life, though battered, is a treasure. And the branches will part, the sky will clear, and her song will rise, soft and unbroken, to the stars.

Open your eyes to see beyond the past,
Time, a reel unwound, looping too fast.
Enter future dreams lush with tears,
A kaleidoscope of fears and forgotten years.

The cigarette falls from her shaking fingers,
Ashes trace whispers where memory lingers.
Time, a distraction, but isn’t it all?
Strangers and entourage drift through the hall.

She was once a distraction—
A neon sign, a feverish attraction.
Now she’s a diagnosis,
A manic-depressive prognosis.

Regrets for the war within her rage,
Her soul, a novel with torn-out pages.
And yet, from silence, words flow clear,
Like ghosts dictating stories she can't bear.

Who are the strangers in this tableau?
Her reflection in fragments she’ll never know.
Time’s cruel arrow bends to her despair,
A loop of smoke curling in air.

Open your eyes, the past refrains,
Its endless echoes clatter in chains.
Yet futures gleam with dreams profane—
She writes them in ashes, again and again.

the world (a razor) hums with
laughter not mine—
crooked smiles cutting corners
of too-loud air (a trembling thing)

hands betray me (marionette strings)
dangling in this cracked parade
where faces blur into shadows
all teeth and no eyes—

and I (a statue) stuck to the cement
of this fear-wracked moment
watch with doe-eyes (wide and glass)
every step (a thunderclap)
a storm pounding the small sky within

sky breaks
and falls like shards,
my breath a shattered hymn
(please no) — tomorrow, I’ll stay
tucked in the soft (silent) cocoon of here.

no steps. no looks. no cruel
laughter to chase me into
the screaming world—

home, the only place
where walls hold me steady,
their silence a shield,
a quiet so deep
it forgets the world.

For she had not accepted defeat,
nor surrendered to the wanderlust of it all,
trapped in the thick fog of her fear—
a labyrinth of shadows where her voice
dissolved into silence.

Metamorphosing, she carved a hollow,
a space to call home.
Fueled by chemicals measured in increments,
their sterile precision slicing through
the feral ache of her longing.
A hiding place she had conjured
as a child, weaving it from ashes and remorse,
where moths flitted to their amber deaths,
the bulb’s hiss a quiet menace,
its danger humming through the stillness.

Courage tasted metallic, sharp
on her tongue, mingling with the salt
of blood smeared on her fingertips.
Another night sprawled open—
her hair tumbling like restless waves,
her thoughts clutching at themselves,
an ouroboros of lamentation.

Sorrow, a seed lodged deep in her womb,
sprouted thorns that pierced her silence.
Shadows stretched their forgotten forms,
etched in the plot of her life—
a scratch, a swirl, a jagged dance
splattered across canvas,
each brushstroke a hymn to her unraveling.

The ghosts pressed in,
whispering their fractured violence.
No one listened. No one heard.
She knelt, crushed petals
beneath the weight of the world.
“Put the broken pieces back,”
she begged,
“reshape the sharp edges
of my disappointments.”

At the brink of dawn,
the angels sang to her—
their voices a river of grief and duende,
swelling, sweeping,
washing her raw and clean.

He was her anam cara,
the raindrops kissed on her raven's beak,
moonstones refracting fractured light.
He was the breath
that held time still,
slipping into her chest,
her heart a wistful drumbeat.

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.

empty staffroom hums,
tinsel draped in gaudy glee,
echoes fill the void.

She rubbed her hands and shook her head,
In the dim-lit room where shadows bled.
The weight of the past, a burdened tune,
Settled like mist beneath the moon.

She knew her power, a tempest near,
Yet bore it cloaked in trembling fear.
A shotgun resting in her palm,
A gentle grip, a vengeful calm.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, her voice a flame,
“I found the love you never could name.
Little gifts in the morning and soft embrace,
No lies hidden in a polished face.”

No masks, no smiles of hollow hues,
For her heart lived honest, pure, and true.
She bore the scars of a past unkind,
But they made her whole, they steeled her mind.

He, who once loomed, a shadow of dread,
Now but a ghost in a story long fled.
Behind closed doors, his venom had crept,
Yet now she ruled where his malice slept.

No longer shamed, no longer small,
She stood as a queen, above it all.
And should he return, his gaze would stray,
For the woman he knew had melted away.

With steady breath, she faced the night,
A sovereign soul, her heart alight.
For those who endure the darkest storm,
Rise anew, their power reborn.

Upon the forest's edge, where wildflowers die,
A circus stirs, where children’s whispers wail.
Their laughter, haunting, mingles with the sky,
A tender madness veiled in sorrow's tale.

Through grieving's grace, she stumbled to his hand,
A savior's touch igniting rebel flame.
In fleeting moments, love defied command,
Rebirth arose, unchained from sorrow's claim.

Yet sleepwalking, her steps betrayed her soul,
Through dewdrop fields her haunted spirit roamed.
A thought mistaken bore a heavy toll,
Uncut her hair, forgiveness yet unhomed.

In sorrow’s bloom, her heart began to mend,
Awaiting grace where loss and love transcend.

The footsteps fall — then fade away —
As silence holds — the breath at bay —
Two hands — in quiet longing — meet,
A tremble — soft — and hearts entreat.

A fever burns — and must be still,
The world outside — they wish to **** —
The rain — it whispers — soft refrain,
Of stories lost — of fear and pain.

The elders' words — like serpents' hiss,
A promise sweet — a bitter kiss —
"Trust me, dear one — for I will save,
Your love — your life — from cruelest grave."

She calms the storm within her mind,
With *****'s balm — a solace blind —
His face is strange — his heart a lie —
But still — she dreams — where no one dies.

The flowers twine — within her hair,
She plays with children unaware —
Of all the rules — the bitter game,
Where whispers wear a nameless shame.

The demons smile — they will not harm,
They cleanse with beads — with prayer's calm charm —
"Forget your name, and curse the night,
The dawn will lift you into light."

But Death — a shadow — cold and near,
Sweeps in — and leaves no room for fear —
The dust — the warmth — no more to chase,
A fleeting dream — an empty place.

The wanderer walks, a restless breeze,
Through promises, through broken seas—
Crimson rain, it softly falls,
A girl transformed by midnight's calls.

The apocalypse, a nearing tune,
Chaos blooms beneath the moon.
Kneeling low, on trembling ground,
The secrets burst without a sound.

Raven hair, with thorns adorned,
Amber eyes by demons mourned.
They broke us down, they built a spire,
A city wrought from heart's desire.

We fled to woods, to wolves and scars,
To twinkle lights in mason jars.
On berry beds, we whispered prayers,
For oceans vast and circling snares.

The circle breaks; the past unfolds,
Her face a mask of ageless molds.
Porcelain breath, a sigh of smoke,
Memories echo, unprovoked.

Confined, we dream of open skies,
But silence calls for sacrifice.
The night, it begs, it softly pleads,
For healing born of choices' seeds.

Empty plates stacked high,
Lonely hearts in wrappings torn,
Love fades with the waste.

He said we were like a supernova,
the sudden explosion, white-hot
and loud in the body of the sky,
the kind of light that burns
through the eyelids,
leaves an afterimage etched
in the retina of the universe.
Seen for three days straight,
sunlight and starlight fused
into one unbearable glare.

He told me love is the reset button,
the way a star collapses to begin again.
He said, I could survive alone,
but chose me instead, as if survival
were not the easiest answer,
as if being with me were a decision
made in a moment of stillness.

I doubted him—
his quiet strength, the way
he could carry the weight of silence
as if it weighed nothing,
the way he didn’t sway
when the winds rose,
when I unraveled, my edges
fraying into the thin air.

I need him to hold the center,
to keep the world from tilting,
but he doesn’t need like I do.
He lives in wants stripped clean—
no hunger, only fullness,
no chaos, just the brushstroke
of a steady hand.

And me—
I am the opposite of steady.
I am a gust,
a whip of color staining the canvas,
a metamorphosis that never lands,
forever on the verge of becoming
but never quite there,
a creature of motion, a hunger
that doesn’t know where to rest.

Still, he stays,
his calm like a gravity
that pulls me into orbit.

The supernova burns out.
The light goes dark.
I want to ask him,
What happens after?
But he looks at me—
the way he always does—
as if the question isn’t necessary,
as if we were already
the answer.

The body learns to lie before the mouth does.
She moves like seaweed caught in a current,
the siren song of her hips pulling others closer—
a collision, a shatter.
Hormones bloom like coral,
bright and false,
a reef of dopamine
where nothing survives for long.

Reality is a cruel lover;
its hands too heavy,
its voice too loud.
She asks herself,
do you still wait for love?
do you still have patience for the breaking?

When she confronts him,
his grin splits his face like a wound,
a predator's smile,
the sound of firecrackers between them,
smoke where the truth should be.
He speaks of a *******,
of giving his power away,
of someone else making his choices.
She cannot decide if this is freedom
or just another kind of cage.

She remembers herself,
the way tequila burned her throat,
the way she burned brighter,
a girl in red,
posed naked under the gaze of men
who painted her as both light and shadow.
She trusted their hands before they betrayed her.
Before she turned cold.
Before she fell silent.
Before she hid her fire.

Now, she is the ocean’s daughter,
sinking deeper,
listening to the song of water
as it whispers secrets only the drowned can hear.
She wonders:
Do the waves ever grow tired of crashing?
Does the salt remember being a tear?

She lets herself drift,
thinking maybe, just maybe,
the pressure of the deep
is a softer weight
than the heaviness of love.

Through fire's wrath and earth's embrace,
He fell to ash, lost from his place.
The rain, a song of sky's lament,
Woke what the flames to darkness sent.

The witch, her hands like ancient trees,
Whispered life on the shifting breeze.
Her words wove through the soot and loam,
To call him back, to bring him home.

The ash dissolved, the earth gave way,
And from the mud, his flesh did sway.
Rain kissed his form, his body whole,
A vessel new, but the same old soul.

He walked through streets where silence lay,
Past mourners steeped in yesterday.
Eyes wide with shock, their grief undone,
For the dead had risen, returned as one.

He reached the house of shadowed pain,
Where she had wept through endless rain.
Her milky eyes could never see,
But grief had shaped her destiny.

Her soul, she’d sold for just one chance,
To feel his touch, his fire, his dance.
He pressed his fingers to her lips,
A ghost, alive, in love's eclipse.

She felt his hunger, wild, unbound,
A rhythm fierce, a primal sound.
The world fell still as they entwined,
Her blindness pierced by love's design.

For one last time, their spirits burned,
A fleeting gift for what she yearned.
A witch's bargain, brief and cruel,
The fire of love, a timeless fuel.

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 day slants
(hiding)
in corners & cubicles
where fluorescent
lights flicker tired sighs

phone calls hum like
half-hearted symphonies
to no one at all
(seemingly important
but aren't they always)

I am
askew in this
tight world of
team players—
their laughter
like sharp edges
I cannot fit

so I fold myself
into the nothingness
of avoided meetings,
responsibilities,
& awkward silence

let me be
a paperweight
holding down
the fleeting chaos
of existence,

askew but steadfast,
tilted but still.

sometimes,
I think,
that maybe,
perhaps,
I should be wrapped in bubble wrap,
a makeshift armor
for the jagged world.

because I am fragile—
like aged porcelain dolls,
cracked eyes
tainted lips,
staring blankly at truths
they'll never tell.

we sat in circles,
confessing sins
or inventing them,
clinging to the lie of purpose.
she breathed in the dust,
the light of the cheap bulb,
while the burning liquor
erased us,
dare by dare.

alive until morning—
skin against skin,
clothes torn away,
as if the nakedness
could make us real.

but there was no beauty,
just the sound of breaths,
and the pooling remains
of something
we once thought...but no longer
was love.

The drugs made his tongue slippery, a snake
shivering white powder, unashamed—
a quick snort from his hand, lips cracked,
peeling his smile back, his gaze drifts, blank
as walls of thick paint, deep hues curdling,
slicked, psychedelic strokes, in seizure.

A strobe cuts, slicing the crowd like a blade—
tighter they press, all touch, no tether;
hungry, he dives, a greedy kiss melting
in muscle spasms, eyes flickering, his soul
undone, unheroed, a heart pounding
its own violence, swollen and caught.

To be happy, just to feel, a blind wish,
eyes of trust, of terror, masked alike,
shackled in seconds of breath, each beat
drawing closer, riding ******’s cruel peak
under dark, tidal waves of night, colliding,
picking locks through consciousness.

Beads of sweat thread bad habits together,
strung like a rosary for sinners unredeemed;
we are the murderers of our soft selves,
our punishment twisting like smoke.
In his hand, the medicine man’s prophecy
dissolves, as music stirs a ghost of meaning,

a scatter of memories, vague, severed,
each doubt echoing our bodies, our homes—
this flesh a lie wrapped in pulse and touch.
Reality shock-shatters, a flat line stretching
until silence is all: the strobe dies
and he fades, release breaking him free.

Mother sighed in a cradle of haze,
stitched my name in smoke, in a fugue of days.
Born to the rhythm of a wheel's refrain—
just the road, just the road, just the hollow refrain.

Father sang to the glass with his weathered hands,
a hymn to forgetting, a preacher’s last stand.
The spaces he left were louder than words,
just the ghost of him, just the absence heard.

There’s a cigarette choir in the shadow’s fist,
amber prayers that fade in a whispered twist.
The whiskey’s a prophet with a venomous tongue,
and I am his echo—forever unsung.

Love was a thief with a mercenary smile,
she held my heart like a stone on trial.
She kissed me once, then left me bare,
now I breathe in the silence, just the air, just the air.

Mother, you carved me a crown of lead,
a burden unseen, a song unsaid.
I roll through the veils of a world undone,
searching for stillness beneath the sun.

The stars, they flicker like bruises in bloom,
each one a wound, each one a room.
I sing to myself—I am the sky's refrain,
rolling alone through the ache, through the flame.

The walls breathe in static—
a hum, a crackle, a whisper of wires
pulling tight around my throat.
Every sound a gunshot.
Every shadow a knife.
The milk spills,
a galaxy spreading across the floor,
an apocalypse in white.

Outside, the neon world churns,
spitting teeth, shrapnel dreams.
Everything slick, wet, sharp.
The streets groan,
their intestines spilling out
in the form of cracked asphalt and broken glass.
I can’t leave;
I won’t.

Inside, the air thickens,
a syrup of dread.
Home is a box,
four corners dripping in soft rot.
I sleep under the table
because the bed is too open,
the ceiling too close.

An old television flickers in the corner—
faces in grayscale,
lips moving with no sound.
I try to pull their words apart,
but they squirm like worms.

Every second fractures,
splitting into shards.
Each shard digs in deep—
a hiccup, a phone ringing,
a window slammed shut
by the hands of ghosts.

I try to glue myself together
with the thought of silence.
But silence is a gun too,
a loaded chamber waiting to click.

The wolves circle out there—
dressed as mailmen, as friends,
as my own reflection.
I clutch the blanket,
a shroud, a shield,
a joke.

Safe.
Safe?
Safety is a story they sell in pills,
in pamphlets, in soft voices
that drip honey and venom.
But the wolves are here.
The wolves are me.
The wolves are you.

I am trapped in this gilt prison,
the bars gleaming like polished teeth,
pearls spooned into my mouth,
their luster turning sour against my tongue.
I wait, always, the watcher,
my hands folded in prayer or paralysis,
listening to the foreign murmurs of the dead—
crows with their black flags
of warning, wings slick with omen.

The mirrors blink,
candles flickering like failing hearts.
The grass outside shivers,
each blade whispering a secret escape
I cannot touch. A swan glides,
its neck an unbroken question,
its shadow darker than the water
it cuts open.

The door shuts with a hush
that feels like a burial.
Photographs click—ceremonies
of absence, memories that grin
like skulls. Death leans in,
a kind-faced thief offering rest.

There are two of us here—
me, and the other me,
bloated with hunger,
my fingers jammed into my throat,
my power swallowed whole.
We bridge this silence
with words brittle as bone,
oaths sworn to break,
the air shattered by the whine of a bullet
brushing skin.

Wells brim with sadness,
their depths haunted by the ghosts
of those who screamed and were silenced.
She thought he stood beside her—
a phantom lover with a tongue
barbed as wire, slicing her
into ribbons.

She dances, her arms a red spiral,
the hula hoop spinning tighter,
a circle of wounds closing
like a mouth around her body.
The swan watches,
its white wings gleaming with the stillness
of something that cannot save her.

We the nobodies, shadows cut from the cloth of smoke and scars,
a fever of sweat and darkness pooling, tears of sorrow swallowing tomorrow.
They locked us in silence, mad minds forging new words, wild and sharp,
each syllable slipping from sanity’s grip, each sound a breath clawing free.

Everything slides in time, the tick-tock mocking us, echoes like footsteps
down the hallway of closed doors, promises that never open.
See you on the other side, they said, where death waits like a lover,
the kiss of a fist, sweet baby girl, sleep—don’t listen,
we’ll wait before sharing the truth, its teeth bare and grinning.

The mania whispers in dark corners, shakes the bones from rest,
and a thousand thoughts slice through, a razor storm beneath quiet skin.
Blood seeping down thick thighs, warmth trickling like proof—
still alive, still fertile with fear, birthing only dread.

He could never hear her, she screamed into an endless void,
her voice a smear, red stains across cold walls.
And no peace wrapped her, no quiet settled in,
only the whisper of madness, and the promise—
of a darker dawn to come.

three days running
(body’s unraveling
the threads of itself
loose stitches yawning wide—)
but my mind
(my manic, my impossible mind)
spins
and spins
and
spins

the ceiling
a vast white ocean
of thoughts unswallowed
while gravity forgets me,
floating on this frantic tide of
(silence?) no,
the hum of all the hours
I should have slept.

oh how cruelly awake,
how absurdly alive,
to feel this lightbulb brain
(scorched, buzzing)
while my knees buckle under the weight
of their own existence.

there will be collapse.
(there will always be collapse.)
but for now,
this manic orchestra
plays on,
its violins tuned to the scream
of a body desperate for dark,
its brass blaring a melody
only the sleepless can hear.

a flicker a spark (the night is)
only a little ache of waiting

rolled tight as a whisper this
cigarette (breathless
paper prayer for) nothing

the flame doesn’t soothe
but it dances,
doesn't it? doesn’t it?

ash falls into
the quiet
I try to call sleep (a lover
who never answers, a lie
I am too awake to stop believing)

another spark
the night twists longer (a thread unspooling)
& my mind unravels (a mad clock
that forgets how to stop ticking)

and this manic silence,
this endless
yes,
no.
yes,
no.

until the stars mock me
& I burn away
waiting for sleep or
the courage to stop pretending
I’m not the flame.

It is in the smudge of mascara,
the red lip bleeding into the cracks
of a bitten mouth.
A quiet rebellion lives there.

Middle fingers do not shout;
they whisper—
a language only the tired
and the brave understand.

Running is not escape,
but a declaration.
A line of white powder,
a streak of neon—
these are maps
to the edge of something
sharp enough to cut.

They told us
fairy tales are for children.
But we grew up and learned
that happy marriages
are the most dangerous lies.

We sit behind screens,
armed with fake smiles,
perfect angles,
warriors of a war we don’t
believe in anymore.

The raves are loud,
but it’s the silence
of disappointment,
of insecure mornings,
of mirrors we cannot meet,
that tells the truth.

This is the war.
This is the smudge,
the smear,
the running.
And still,
we rise from the wreckage
like sparks in the dark,
too tired to shout,
too alive to stop.

Look into my eyes, a kaleidoscope of thoughts,
Fractured, refracting, endless.
So many choices, each a dagger’s tip,
Sharp, glinting in the shadow of paths untraveled.

They hurt the beast because they feared it—
A presence lingering like smoke in an empty room,
A whisper of what was always known.
The OD, quick and painless, invites us all,
A final door that clicks cleanly, slicing through the noise.

Why him, if you knew?
Knew the jeweled words would stab,
Their brilliance reflecting a hate that devoured.
Lonely strangers, relinquished and raw,
Digging holes with greedy hands,
Starving for connection, aching with regret.

She was different—
Too much, too close,
Her truth a mirror to the ghosts he denied.
She heard their whispers,
Too intense for his brittle comfort,
Her very being a revolting challenge.

Each second, a journey in shards.
She, finally accepted—by a psychopath—
No longer escaping the world’s biting sorrows.
Damaged children, raising damaged children,
Grasping for something whole,
Exploring the wounds like maps,
Each scar an unspoken truth.

His "I don’t love you anyway,"
A mourning, a death,
Memories strangled as he choked time from her lungs.
His cruel laugh, a vibration cutting through marrow.
But peace comes, soft and unstoppable,
A river of silent love,
Strong and masculine, like wild horses running untamed.

We don’t have a price.
Some define freedom in dreams; others in chains.
Yet the end waits for all—
Healing like a long exhale,
Forgiveness intimate, secret,
A kaleidoscope settled into stillness.

She swam deep, seeking the golden key of consciousness,
past bubbles of fear that clung,
reaching desperately for the surface.
The past, a gaggle of mistakes,
echoed through her mind like laughter—
his laughter, sharp against her innocence.

He left her a gift:
not love, but poison coursing her veins,
bad habits and weaknesses,
an inheritance of struggle,
writhing from the aftershock of his drugs.

She searches her archive of memories,
each morning darker,
a perverse symphony of snakes feeding
on her dwindling strength.
Yet still, she listens—
without judgment, though they doubt her why.

The world burns like vinyl,
time stretching in discordant grooves,
a roadtrip of betrayal.
Every mile wasted, every dollar spilled,
a confession bleeding into nothing.
Trouble lingers behind,
but she dares not look back.

She dreams in taxis,
crimson leaves falling at dusk,
paranoia cradling her like a restless child.
He never knew she existed.
No one wanted her.

Yet, in the cracks of her being,
a lucky charm gleams,
a distraction from the silence.
The future parts like an answered prayer,
a criminal mystery unraveled in early hours,
his goodbye a faint echo of closure.

She wants to trust in the truth,
to defend the fragile child within her,
the one who cries with a change of mind,
the one still searching
for a tomorrow worth resurrecting.

Seven daggers pierce the heart where sorrow weeps,
A crown of anguish set in sacred woe.
Each wound a tale of love the soul still keeps,
Each tear a river where her children go.

They killed you, Mother, yet they bow and pray,
Barefoot, on knees, their whispers fill the air.
For gifts, for glory, cures to light their way,
For sacred hope that blooms beneath despair.

No lies she speaks, her promises are true,
Her veiled eyes see the depths of our regret.
You’ll die as well—this life is but a hue
Of fleeting light; she’ll guide where fears are met.

Adore her name, though grief her visage bears,
For love eternal sanctifies her tears.

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.

The motel sat squat and lonesome in the middle of nowhere, like a bad idea that couldn’t quite die. Pull over those shotgun thoughts, she’d said, her voice thin as cigarette smoke, half-love, half-warning. In the backseat, a wisp of a memory stirred—bodies colliding like busted stars, creamy petals dropping one by one onto cheap upholstery. The slap of reality had come later, sharp as a motel key left unclaimed at the desk.

Inside, the jukebox wheezed out its eternal last rites to broken men, women, and jukeboxes. Black coffee steamed in the booth, untouched. She stared past it, past him, past everything. He’d tried "I'm sorry," tried it on a napkin, in a thousand different intonations, but the words were as empty as her half-lidded eyes. Drunken pleas didn’t move her anymore. Deep down we don’t change, she’d said once, tracing a cigarette burn on the table. He hated that she might be right.

The fears swam in his head like rats in the pool out back—too filthy to save, too stubborn to drown. Every motel had them: rats, ghosts, people like him. The long drives didn’t help, the sleeping pills didn’t help. Family therapy was a joke they didn’t laugh at anymore.

Outside, the desert was a ******’s heartbeat, long and taut, waiting to pull the trigger. No welcome home here, no open arms. Sacrifices made, yes, but not counted. That was the rule. He felt the morphine blues of goodbye coming, their ugly melody too hard to respond to. Wish you were here, his mind whispered, but the words were jagged and broke apart before they reached his lips.

After dark, the days of handovers and cheap dreams faded into something worse: the truth. On our deathbeds, maybe we all regress. Memories stay young at the moment of disaster. He imagined her stepping away from tomorrow's drama, just far enough to let the edge of her dress brush against it.

“Help the invalid,” she’d said once, her voice sticky with mockery. Was that him now, the invalid? Maybe. He didn’t answer her then, and she didn’t wait for it. She never waited.

He lit a cigarette, setting fire to everyday troubles, or at least pretending to. The creamy petals were all gone now. Only the thorns remained, brittle and unforgiving.

Seeking shelter from the whispers’ breath,
The cross digs deep, her burdened path.
Her shoulders bow to grief untold,
Impregnated by hope grown cold.

Enemies masked in waltzing guise,
Spin circles beneath deceiving skies.
She bows graciously to his eminence tall,
A shadow looms, a silent call.

"Where are you from?" they question her so,
"From nowhere," she answers, a truth of woe.
"A ******* child, unwanted, unseen,
An echo of sorrow where life had been."

Candlelight flickers, betraying her years,
Its glow etching lines, language of tears.
Thoughts breach barriers, a storm in flight,
Black stallions pound through the veils of night.

He liked to play tricks, her torment, her plea,
A curse spun in pity, her shadow’s decree.
The ghost of him lingers, a sparrow’s ascent,
Her innocence pure, but her spirit bent.

Fading to madness, a lover’s embrace,
Embroidery patterns the fabric of grace.
The past weaves its threads, each stitch a scar,
A wraith’s pale flay in a world ajar.

No taste of codeine, no balm for the strife,
Defensive in virtue, her battle is life.
Through madness, through whispers, through sorrow’s long flight,
She vanishes softly into shadowed light.

Mascara smeared,
a black flag raised in surrender,
bare feet pressing into Earth—
pregnant weight pulls her down,
and the doors—
they don’t swing,
don’t creak,
just stay shut like the mouths of saints.

She was supposed to be invisible,
but the mirror laughed,
its reflection catching the outline of her face,
the philosophy of being—
full of answers no one asks for,
full of consequence.

She saw them—
red-handed in their stolen kiss,
the air thick with the scent of betrayal,
a forbidden sacrament.
She wept,
not for the kiss,
not for the woman,
but for the rip,
the spill of her life
on a floor too clean
to keep her.

He stumbles in guilt,
tripping over mistakes like loose wires.
His hands full of her tears,
his mouth heavy with excuses—
a cheater,
a coward,
a man drowning in his own reflection.

And she,
pregnant with something heavier than grief,
lets the Earth hold her steady,
lets the mascara stain her cheeks
like war paint,
lets the world fold itself around her silence—
because the doors might not open,
but her hands,
her feet,
her eyes—
they will.

during my cigarette break
i met a perfect stranger
(his hands smelled of bleach,
mine manicured and adorned)
he a cleaner
i a teacher's assistant

we spilled words like loose coins,
quickly, easily
about pasts
that refused to stay buried.
how mental illness
gnawed quietly at the edges
of our days,
how Christmas was
a fistful of broken promises,
how parents became
ghosts of voices
we no longer called.

we confessed
to the solitude of crying
when the walls were thick enough
to keep secrets,
and i saw in his eyes
something frighteningly familiar—
the weight
of almost,
of never quite enough.

him a cleaner,
i a teacher's assistant,
yet between us,
no distance,
only the soft unraveling of
what it means to be human.

I shook his hand
with utmost respect,
the kind reserved for warriors
who fight wars no one sees,
and I asked for his name—
(it hung in the air
like a fragile bird).

he told me softly,
as if ashamed of his own syllables,
as if names could erase
the years of invisible labor
or the silent rooms
he scrubbed clean of other people’s messes.

and in that moment,
he was no stranger,
no cleaner, no shadow—
just a man
whose story brushed against mine,
soft as shared breath,
sharp as shared pain.

when I walked away,
the smoke of my cigarette
curled into his absence,
and I wondered
how many lives
we pass without touching,
how many names
we never think to ask.

Little child wanders,
wild forest whispers through the air,
Grandma stirs her ***.

Wrinkles tell her tale,
sentimental tears falling,
lonely nights persist.

Pregnant skies grow ripe,
radiant but angry clouds,
fist of thunder strikes.

What happened to you?—the Question hangs—
A specter on the Air—
There’s Something—gnawing at the Bones—
And Madness stirs in There—

A Sin—a Stain upon the Flesh—
No Cleansing can Repeal—
The Laughter of a Distant Hell—
Resounds—a Brazen Peal—

He struck—Repeatedly—a Thorn—
Against a Petaled Grace—
And claimed—the Fracture of her Soul—
Was not—a Man’s Disgrace—

"I feel—quite Fine"—the Monster said—
Before the Hunger came—
And ripped away—the Veil of God—
To stoke—an Ancient Flame—

She fled—a Wolf without her Cloak—
To Secrets—of the Trees—
While Echoes of his Jagged Cry—
Rose on the Timid Breeze—

No Answers—Waited on the Hill—
No Truth beneath the Stone—
But Evidence—of what Was Done—
Is Etched—in Flesh and Bone.