In the gray it dwells,
shades of sorrow, hues of joy,
eyes paint what they feel.

Between dark and light,
truth bends to our weary hearts,
colors shift with moods.

A storm clouds the mind,
turning clear skies into ash,
world shaped by our fears.

Yet hope’s golden glow,
softens shadows, clears the haze,
brightens all we see.

Feelings weave the veil,
through which life unfolds its face,
mine lies in between.

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.

Confession unfolds,
Wild child sheds lost innocence,
Time locks guilt away.

Jealous seas whisper,
Filthy mouth hides love’s regret,
Calmness fades to gray.

Pills drift through the waves,
Melancholy grips the heart—
Hope sinks with the tide.

A pearl moon circles,
Koi fish ripple silent dreams,
Water whispers low,
Circling hopes, a dream to hold.

Bouquet of regret,
Petals wilt with each footstep,
Vows fade in the breeze.

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.

Magnifying glass, a preacher’s eye,
You held it steady, watch the edges fry.
Her smile curling like a silent crime,
Promises snapping, one wail at a time.

Sirens call.
They call you home.

Cigarette burns where her lips once lived,
A paper throat, and you’re unforgiven.
The smoke uncoils like a serpent’s hymn,
In the ruins of her, your fingers swim.

And she’s tasting something holy,
A chemical prayer on her tongue.
While your stranger smiles slowly,
His palm says run.

Oh, you’re tracing lifelines,
Marking graves on borrowed skin.
Childhood shadows, beasts still whispering,
When no one could save her, where were you then?

Where were you then?

She claws at the mirror where her ghost resides,
Fighting sleep, fighting him,
Fighting years she thought she’d outrun—
Oh, but trauma’s a promise kept in blood.

And it’s no longer safe for you here,
Not in the ruins where her voice disappeared.
Sirens wail but don’t baptize.
A stranger’s smile, a forest gone numb,
And a ******* fire with nowhere to run.

No, no—
Nowhere to run.

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.

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.

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.

No soft lullabies for this rage,
no bedtime tales for the scars.
Her rebellion, a waltz in combat boots,
spiked with grunge, venom, and a scream
that split the dawn like broken glass.
No lowering of voices—
it was them who whispered ******
while she carried the weight of silence,
their pills clutched in cold fists.

Madness was no surrender,
no white flag to psychiatrists
and their bottled truths.
She danced instead,
barefoot with demons that knew her name,
their laughter a dirge,
their touch as real as chains.

Words slithered into mirages—
truth, lies, all indistinct,
a love once pure now shadowed,
a muse now bound by sleepless nights
and post-traumatic hymns.
Our Lady of Sorrows bled for a flock
that prayed in her shadow,
kneeling in borrowed guilt.
But when she bled,
no one looked.

Plans drawn in whispered ink—
a razor’s edge,
a promise of release.
Love, a phantom now,
its face distorted with time,
matured, stretched thin by distance.
The scream of silence grew louder,
and demons conversed until the sun rose,
its light bruising the horizon.

She was no saint.
She forgave no trespasses.
But as the dawn burned anew,
there lingered a pulse,
a faint rhythm of hope—
love not redeemed,
but waiting,
coiled like a spring
for the next dance.

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.

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 dove lies split open, roadkill on black tar,

its white purity bleeding into the dark,

war has begun where peace once perched,

feathers soaked in oil, the asphalt’s cold hunger,

we name this wreckage progress, and drive on.

The room was dim, lit only by the haze of a street lamp filtering through half-drawn blinds, scattering lines like prison bars across the detritus of her life: unopened bills, cracked coffee mugs, and the perfumed ghosts of a dozen wilting roses collapsing under their own beauty. Knife to her neck—the thought slithered through her mind, unbidden, unformed, like smoke escaping a fire too distant to see. She pressed her fingers to her temple, hoping to divine meaning from the chaos of the moment, but the jigsaw of letters refused assembly, scattered as though by some cosmic gust.

Words were a storm. They rained in torrents, fragmented and incomprehensible, soaking her thoughts with omens she had no strength to interpret. The post-it notes—cheerful yellows and pinks—spoke a language of lies, each one slapped haphazardly to the walls, the fridge, the bathroom mirror: “You’re stronger than this,” “One day at a time,” “Smile, because it happened.” Their saccharine optimism grated against the grinding in her chest, the truth she could not ignore: she was falling, spinning into the gravity of some unseen event she could not stop, only anticipate.

Across town—or maybe just across the hall—he poured amber whiskey into a chipped glass, his movements sluggish, like a marionette whose strings had frayed. The top-shelf bottle mocked him; it wasn’t his whiskey, it wasn’t his glass, and yet here he was, owning it all with the hollow gravitas of a man who sold everything, including himself. The liquid swirled, catching the dim light like a memory trying to surface, but it went nowhere, dissolved into the haze of his thoughts.

The voices came next. They always did. They whispered in tones too low for words but loud enough to unsettle, to make him wonder whether the sound was inside or outside his skull. They took aim, their intent barbed and deliberate, yet the execution was silence—a silence that curled down his spine, as intimate as a lover’s breath but as cold as the shiver it left behind.

She saw it coming—whatever it was. She always did. The omen hung in the air between them, a phantom that moved between their lives, threading their disjointed existences together like a careless seamstress stitching a wound. And still, the knife stayed at her neck, its edge a promise, a prophecy, waiting for the final rose to collapse under its own weight.

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.

Pills rattle on cue,
Cats purr in soft solace true.
Sofa hugs my frame,
Netflix whispers, sleep reclaims—
Healing slow, the hours accrue.

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.

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.

There was a time I carried hurt
like a second skin—
every crack and scar a story I told myself,
a story I swore was true.

I cradled that pain like a child,
fed it, sang to it, let it grow inside me,
until its roots tangled with my ribs,
its leaves whispered in my lungs.
It became so familiar,
I forgot what it was like
to breathe without its weight.

But healing is a quiet rebellion.
It does not storm in;
it tiptoes like a sunrise,
peeling back the dark
layer by tender layer.

One day, I stopped asking why
and started asking how.
How do I unspool this thread of hurt?
How do I make space for the truth?
Not the truth I told myself to survive,
but the truth that sets me free.

It turns out, healing isn't forgetting.
It isn’t pressing rewind
or pretending the hurt was never there.
It’s holding it up to the light,
examining every jagged edge,
and saying, “I see you. But you don’t own me.”

I am learning that letting go
isn’t a loss; it’s a choice.
To let the past rest
without dragging it behind me.
To forgive—not for them, but for me.
To unclench my fists and find my palms
open, ready to hold joy again.

And now, as I walk forward,
I am lighter,
like a bird that has finally noticed
the sky has always been there,
waiting,
ready to carry me home.

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

Generations listened, holding back tears,
as if the weight of history whispered
in the cadence of silence.
She pretended to sleep,
watching his prayers fracture the air,
each syllable a plea for forgiveness,
each word a lie she had already memorized.

He broke her innocence-
fumbling hands, snapping buttons,
sweat and tears mingling into something unholy.
"I will never leave you, my angel," he murmured,
as fingers pressed deeper into her,
a trespass she could not resist nor refuse.

Revulsion swallowed her whole,
his touch a poison, his presence a stain,
his words a scripture written in filth.
She will tell no one,
her secrets folding inwards like a flower
too afraid to bloom.
No fight, no flight, only silence,
an ache where her voice should be.

She escaped by becoming light,
a wisp of air, translucent and untouchable,
impure as a pearl rolled in dirt and time.
When he forced her open,
her mouth like a chirping chick
devouring his ****, a sin she could not cleanse,
she knew- h could not buy her,
not with fear, not with authority,
not with the brown ****** he dragged
like the ghost of his shame.
He was nothing-
a sad old man with a criminal record,
a shadow of power that dissolved
when touched by her refusal.
And so, she remained:
light, air, silence,
the dirt pressed against her skin
washed away with the years.

She had that sinking feeling,
like the weight of a ghost—
pressing cold truths on her shoulders,
a whisper too loud to ignore.
Something terrible had happened.
The room tilted,
and the confession spilled
from lips cracked with silence.

I’ll give your life meaning, she said,
a promise coiled in smoke,
early morning walk of shame,
heels striking pavement,
a rhythm for the unspoken.
Life intoxicating,
a kaleidoscope of ache and anesthetic.
For a moment,
I finally feel no pain.

Forget the rumours—
her psychosis lit like a matchstick,
spreading in the wildfire of small towns
and smaller minds.
Spare me your hypocrisy;
you watered the weeds
that tangled her voice.

But he loved her still,
in the way the moon loves the sea—
pulling her closer,
knowing she’d still pull away.
Always, he said,
and his words stitched her unraveling.
Even ghosts can’t carry everything.

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.

There’s a thread on her wrist,
red like pomegranate seeds bursting—
three knots tight as a mother’s secret,
three wishes pressed between breaths
when the world looks away.
She whispers into the glitches—
the way the sky skips like a scratched vinyl,
the way the ground hums
just before the fall.

She doesn’t blink anymore.
It’s all there,
in the corner of your mouth,
in the pauses where words drown themselves.
She hears the notes you never played,
sees the shadow in the mirror’s gasp,
speaks to the silence like a sister.

The bracelet taught her the language of sap
and stone and the ocean’s bite.
It sings in loops, an ancient chorus—
not yours, not mine,
but something older than the first mistake.

Three knots, she says,
for the door that never stays shut,
for the stars stitched into her palms,
for the moments where time hiccups and forgets itself.

And when she speaks,
it’s not a voice—it’s a frequency,
a vibration you feel in your ribs
like a forgotten childhood song.
She turns her wrist—
the red thread catches the light—
and the world unravels for her,
one gift, one glitch, one truth at a time.

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.

In quiet hours, Sundays unfold,
Lying in bed, our stories retold.
Side by side, hands softly entwined,
Whispers of moments, tenderly aligned.
Simple love, a treasure, gentle and bold.

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.

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.

She wanted to blow a hole
Inside the temple of tomorrow,
Ripping the facade of false hope,
Shattering dreams she cannot borrow.

"Tell me! Accept me! Forgive my weaknesses!"
The screams of a soul torn apart,
A monster forged in the furnace of hatred,
Their abuse painted across her heart.

Only the burn of chemicals calms the beast,
Trapped in the past, never released.
Another hit to muffle the cries,
But demons resurface as the high dies.

Death whispers with a silencer's breath,
Golden child lies in the shadow of death.
She, the unwanted, she, the broken,
Rage withdraws where words are unspoken.

He never fought them, never stood tall,
Just smiled as she crumbled, watching her fall.
"Look in the mirror, who will save you now?"
Her reflection screams, but she doesn’t know how.

Comfort carved in the lines of her flesh,
Destruction's lover, her only caress.
"Don’t leave me all alone!" she cries,
Echoes of pain through empty skies.

A child estranged, silent and cold,
Unaware of the horrors untold.
She bears the weight, the scars of despair,
A temple in ruins, no one left to care.

So she screams to the void,
To the gods of tomorrow,
Take her sorrow, take her sorrow!
But they leave her hollow.

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.

Illness blooms like nightshade,
its roots deep in my imagination.
I map his crevices—
each scar, each shadow a continent—
and commit them to memory.
Creation demands sacrifice,
they said,
so I buried my soul in the garden,
fingers carving half-moons
into the skin of my palm.

Chemical courage
slipped into my veins,
a cocktail of desires and leaps of faith.
Adaptation meant suicidal thoughts—
not fought, but tamed,
like wild animals pacing
the edges of my brain.

The candles melted,
grieving their own light,
smiles curling away
from the heat of mourning.
Each dawn, a quiet betrayal:
submission instead of rebellion.

I want the rush of blood again,
the roar of adrenaline
speaking in colors only I understand,
a language universal in its madness.
But now, there is only silence.
Black coffee, white memories—
a **** of the past,
stripped bare of its poetry.

The eyes—mirrors of sins, fragments of something deeper, darker—reflected back as she stared, hollow but alive in the stillness. She felt the starvation of the beast within her, pacing, clawing, a quiet desperation gnawing at her ribs. Her wings spread like the golden dawn's promise, a cruel mirage of escape, yet the weight of life pulled her back, anchoring her to the earth.

In the quiet hours, he whispered, we’re always alone, and the words nestled like burrs in her mind, scratching, lingering. She felt their truth seep in, unavoidable and raw, threading itself into the fabric of her mind like stitches holding together a wound that refused to heal.

Vivid dreams clawed at her in sleep—visions of other lives, other faces, shadowed figures speaking to her in gestures, fingers dancing in sign language, secrets woven in the air. She would wake in paralysis, shackled in silence, eyes wide as if staring into a void that she knew was watching her, always watching.

Scars of hope, she thought, tracing the lines on her arms, the stories she'd written in flesh, layered beneath the numb veil of sedatives. She had cut past ties in time, sharp and clean, slicing away the tethers that bound her to memory, to faces that no longer lingered in her dreams. Every attempt had been a rebirth, each suicide a reawakening of truth. And yet, she had awoken again, the wilting pulse of survival pressing her forward.

The elders would decide—her fate, her future, as if it were some verdict to be handed down from faceless arbiters of her despair. She walked into the darkness as if it were her home, her familiar lover, arms open to its hollow embrace, knowing it would never abandon her. There were no more tomorrows, only a slow descent into silence, punctuated by the beat of a dying heart.

And as the night stretched on, she listened

“It’s all your fault,” her mother spat,
the words curling like smoke
burning holes through the film
as the reel of her life sputtered,
frames melting, memories blistered.

“Are you ashamed?” she asked him once,
but the answer was a rooftop of ravens,
black and fat with fury,
their wings heavy with arguments
that scattered like dandelion seeds
on a storm-bitten wind.

He adored her—or so she thought—
until his chats told otherwise.
Still, he guarded her like stained glass,
jealous of each gaze that lingered,
each stranger who feasted
on her church-window eyes,
shards of color sharp enough to cut.

Her mother’s lies
coiled in her throat,
a banquet of bitterness
she could never swallow.
She needed a scapegoat,
an alibi for the twin
flickering inside her:
one a saint of silken dreams,
the other a sinner
digging graves for every tomorrow.

Why is it never enough?
Not the apology, not the tears,
not the hollow space where love
once curled its soft animal body.

She punches the mirror,
and it blossoms like her pain—
a thousand fractured faces staring back,
none of them hers.
Her reflection weeps
as she stands alone,
the only guest
at a feast of glass.

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.

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.

no price on the wind,
whispered soft, "Forgive me, friend."
hearts mend without cost.

The quiet underwater hum,
a lullaby of stars, a murmur—
universe breathing from its womb,
and we, small, ashen sparks, adrift,
a distant glimmer in the vast,
like sirens calling dreams awake.

She tasted ******'s slow dissolve,
a little calm beneath the tongue,
and hands that shook, still trembling words—
her fears laid bare in shaking lines,
as anxiety led her to cliff edges,
silent as the ocean’s pull.

She feels ancient, crumbling bone and sigh,
though he insists she’s still young,
but each high she chases, harder—
brown powder racing blood and heart,
the beat slipping, frantic, mad,
her gaze unraveling at the seams.

Past slips in, a nightmare child,
picking at scabs, laddered arms,
hair yanked as if by some twisted root.
And him—his weight, his need—she bends,
forgets as he pushes her close to oblivion,
as bruises bloom, a lover’s bloom.

With bite, with mark, she blooms and fades,
and finally sleeps, lips bleeding night.
Past cowers in the mirror’s face,
while demons swarm, clawing back.
The bitter pills she swallows whole,
their taste as old as ancient grief.

Beyond cracked glass, lace and shadow,
the old woman waits—her hand in Death’s.
Church bells toll the hour low,
as flames draw near and edges blur—
and in the dark, the moon hangs low,
her reawakening marked in ash and bone.

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.

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.

Beneath the moon's cold, silver eye,
She walks alone where shadows lie.
A girl with chaos in her veins,
Addictions anchoring her chains.

The beggar sat with cards in hand,
A gypsy wind, a whispering sand.
"The Tower falls," the old man said,
"A truth will strike, you'll wish you fled."

Reality, like glass, now shatters,
Her consciousness—no longer scattered.
A daggered truth, it tears, it rends,
As darkness gathers, old wounds mend.

She wears her past like ghostly shrouds,
A shadow trailing, black and proud.
Her demons leer with burning flame,
Eyes of guilt—they know her name.

She sees herself through mirrors cursed,
A jagged soul, her sins rehearsed.
Her reflection screams, a silent dirge,
And madness sings—a wretched urge.

She stumbles through a twisted maze,
Insanity in walls ablaze.
A labyrinth where screams rebound,
And all the exits can’t be found.

The sage’s smoke—an earthly balm,
Cannot restore her spirit’s calm.
For though she begs the world to save,
The map she needs is hers to pave.

No hands but hers can cut the thread,
No voice but hers can wake the dead.
Though black fire demons haunt her way,
Her will alone can break their sway.

So in the dark, she makes a vow,
Though frail, though lost—she’ll rise somehow.
The Tower fell, but she remains,
A storm, reborn from fractured chains.

We’ve made this place of leaving—
a vault for the untended.
Emotions stack like unlabeled jars,
their contents thick with time,
sediments of grief,
crystals of joy unsavored.

Are we the living,
or the ones who forgot
to move their hands
in the rhythm of the world?
The air smells of waiting,
stale, heavy with pause.
We circle the same questions,
polishing them into mirrors
where our faces blur.

Inside us,
an atlas torn apart:
coastlines of longing,
islands of silence,
rivers carving paths we never took.
Each scar a road.
Each sigh a compass.
Yet the map to home
eludes us still.

We walk the perimeter of ourselves,
searching for the key we swallowed.
The treasures we hoard
are dust without light,
their worth unseen,
their meanings locked
in a language we once spoke
but let slip away.

What is this place?
A limbo where our shadows
mourn their bodies.
Here, even death hesitates,
unsure if it belongs.
And we, the keepers,
stand guard over
what we cannot name—
prisoners and sentinels both,
afraid to leave,
afraid to stay.