Strong is the man I’ve become
I’ve learned to love the reflection  
that once felt foreign, distorted, untrue.  
I’ve carved dreams from discipline,  
built strength from sleepless nights  
spent chasing life with relentless steps.

Yet beneath skin grown tough,  
scars remain quiet reminders  
of a child forever searching,  
eyes wide, heart hopeful,  
reaching toward invisible warmth.

Every goal I set, every height scaled,  
bears a subtle whisper
an echo of longing,  
a hidden prayer:  
"Let this be home.  
Let this be meaning."

Some days I barely hear it,  
lost in triumph, bathed in sunlight.  
Others, it trembles louder
woven intricately, softly  
into every victory I seek,  
every summit I climb.

Though strength carries me,  
though love fills me,  
still the child inside whispers,  
asking quietly, gently
"When will it be enough  
to finally feel whole?"

I’ve carried chaos
like a keychain
noisy as my home;
but lately,
I’ve found doors
opening
into spaces
I call mine.

Each step
is a quiet arrival
into freedom,
unlocking peace
like rooms
filled gently
with silence,
a stillness
I’ve dreamed of.

In the park,
nature unfolds
tiny worlds
beneath my fingertips
grass whispering green,
trees stretching slowly,
animals stitching
quiet stories
into earth’s tapestry.

I paint
the poetry
of sunlight on leaves,
tracing colors
only nature knows;
each brushstroke
a soft conversation
between my heart
and the quiet
of the world.

Here,
I feel earth turning.
a gentle rotation
underneath my feet
grounding me,
steadying my soul,
reminding me
I belong
exactly
where peace
meets freedom.

This is my sanctuary,
the place
where chaos
melts quietly
into creativity
where poems bloom
like wildflowers,
and my thoughts
finally feel
like home.

I won’t claim space  
you haven't softly opened,  
but in the gentle breath  
between silence and sound,  
I remain

Not as a shadow lingering  
nor a ghost from yesterday,  
but as someone who always saw you,  
clearly, tenderly,  
even when your heart feared  
what it meant to be truly known.

I know your quiet battles,  
the way you fear losing control,  
how it aches to reveal yourself,  
to step from shadow into light,  
uncertain if anyone could truly hold  
the weight and wonder of your soul.

I've seen you craft careful armor,  
watched you dance on edges of yourself  
longing to be witnessed,  
yet afraid the world  
might look too deeply,  
or not closely enough.

But I saw.

I saw the trembling courage  
behind every hesitant smile,  
the hidden poetry you wrote  
with whispered breaths,  
the strength in softness  
you thought went unnoticed.

I witnessed your silent bravery
the quiet way you loved,  
the gentle way you tried,  
the powerful beauty  
in simply showing up,  
even when you felt unseen.

Within my chest, a garden pulses,  
roots tangled in quiet intensity;  
each heartbeat cultivating colors unseen,  
vibrant blossoms born from tender ache,  
and silken petals steeped in silent longing.

Every sensation cascades gently inward,  
streams of subtle fire carving valleys
softly etching canyons of profound empathy,  
where whispered moments pool,  
reflecting constellations beneath my skin.

I sense life's weight in feathered touches,  
grains of joy and sorrow balanced delicately,  
their subtle pressure leaving echoes  
as intricate as veins upon a leaf,  
or dewdrops trembling on a spider's web.

My emotions are twilight symphonies
notes both luminous and shadowed,  
harmonies constructed from delicate pain,  
rhythms measured by breaths held and released,  
each silence profound as a thousand melodies.

Through such sweet torment,  
my spirit crafts meaning from tenderness,  
forming quiet revolutions in perception;  
sorrow softens into insightful wisdom,  
fragility births unyielding strength.

Thus, I tend lovingly this internal wilderness,  
cherishing its delicate complexity;  
for in bleeding softly, courageously,  
I discover the poetry woven deeply within
my heart, gently wounded, eternally alive.

I learned loneliness
before I learned to speak,
a child quietly building a home
from silence,
walls thick enough
to hide pain, fear,
everything I couldn’t afford
for the world to see.

I watched love through
my friend’s living room window,
parents who smiled without conditions,
voices softer than the edges
I’d grown accustomed to.
I’d wonder
were their hearts made differently,
or was mine?

In that emptiness,
I taught myself how to move
three steps ahead,
reading faces like books
I’d never fully trust
because trusting
meant losing,
and losing meant returning
to a quiet room
with no one waiting inside.

Yet, behind every shield
I raised,
every hurt I inflicted
just to prove I was still here,
was a child desperately
trading pieces of himself
for scraps of approval
tiny affirmations
that someone could care.

And today,
I still carry that child,
his silent void tucked within
my ribs,
aching in quiet hours,
whispering that no success,
no strength, no victory
will ever compare
to feeling loved
without having to earn it.

At night,
the truth of this absence
returns:
I would trade
everything
every breath, every triumph,
every dream
just to feel
what it’s like
to truly be someone’s child.

Oh merry-go-round of life,  
masked revelers dance unseen,  
in halls of velvet whispers rife,  
where power dons a darkened sheen.

Golden masks conceal the eyes  
that govern secrets none will know;  
in crystal halls, they hypnotize,  
pulling strings from down below.

Chandeliers drip with hidden truths,  
champagne flows through veins of glass,  
above the crowds, aloof, uncouth,  
masters laughing as puppets pass.

Spinning dreams of carousel gold,  
gilded horses blind and bound,  
fortunes spun, bought and sold,  
silken hands spin round and round.

Beneath masks carved in subtle grin,  
privilege sips its chosen wine;  
behind velvet ropes of sin,  
the poor outside peer through and pine.

In corridors of painted night,  
tales told by shadows’ breath
hidden rules by candlelight,  
the poor dance blindfolded to death.

Yet the music spins, surreal, lush,  
a fevered dream in masquerade  
where those who rule whisper “hush,”  
as justice sleeps and debts unpaid.

When you speak,
the world aligns again
words threading softly,
reassuring my restless heart.
I savor those small moments,
your presence gentle
like morning light
across empty rooms.

Yet, your silence
it fills me with questions,
leaving me wandering corridors
of confusion,
wondering
if I’ve stepped wrong,
spoken poorly,
or missed some hidden truth.

Have I broken something fragile
in this unseen bond?
This uncertainty echoes
without end,
heavy and unspoken,
yet I carry it willingly,
holding tight
to the quiet hope
that my care alone
can be enough.

Even unanswered,
even without certainty,
my heart chooses
to remain
beyond reasons,
beyond answers,
beyond all understanding.

Sometimes
when the world goes quiet
and I am left alone
with the soft hum inside my skull
I hear them.
Not one voice,
but a thousand.

A symphony of ghosts
wearing my tongue.
Telling me who to be.
What to fear.
What to want.
What to hate in myself.

They sound like me
but they are not me.

They are the weight of every look
I mistook for love.
Every silence
that taught me shame.
Every rule
spoken or implied
engraved in the marrow
before I ever had a choice.

They are the applause I bled for.
The warnings that made me small.
The comforts that came with a cost.

And I wonder
how do you find truth
in a mind you did not build?

What if the self
I’ve been trying to become
was never lost
only buried
beneath decades of conditioning
that spoke kindly
and caged beautifully?

They say to be aware
is to be free
but awareness is a wound.
It opens your eyes
to how little was ever yours.

We are born soft.
Open.
Wild.
And then,
bit by bit,
we are rewritten
in the handwriting of others
until we forget
we ever had a voice of our own.

So what is freedom?
Not escape.
Not rebellion.
It is the quiet revolution
of remembering
your original sound.

The soul’s first whisper
before language.
Before fear.
Before you were made
into someone else’s reflection.

It’s raining again
how familiar,
like a breath I’ve held for years
and forgot how to exhale.

I find myself wishing
the pain would rise
sharpen, sting,
cut deeper than it should.

There’s something honest in the ache,
something warm in the cold.
It hurts,
but it’s the only thing
that still feels true.

There’s a comfort in hurting,
as if the storm understands
what silence never could.
As if the ache knows
what was lost
better than words ever will.

So let it fall.
Let it soak the skin
and whisper old truths.
Because in the end,
it’s not the memory that lingers
it’s the way it still
makes me feel alive.

I do not grieve like they tell me to.  
There are no tidy goodbyes,  
no soft release.  

My grandparents live  
in the other house.  
The one untouched by time.  
Where I am still small,  
feet dangling off the couch,  
the scent of soup curling through rooms  
like the breath of something holy.  
They are smiling. Always smiling.  
The kind of smile that says,  
You are safe here.
And I believe it.  
Even now.

People say they are gone.  
But I can walk through that house  
with my eyes closed.  
I know each creak in the floorboards,  
each photo frame on the hallway wall,  
the way the light hits the kitchen tiles  
at 4 p.m. on Sundays.  

How can they be gone  
if I still feel their warmth  
when the sun folds over my back?  
If I still hear their voices  
in the quiet hum between heartbeats?

Death asks me to acknowledge it.  
To grant it a name, a seat at the table.  
But I won’t.  
Because to name it  
is to end them.  

And I can’t.  
I won’t.

They are still in that house
laughing softly in the next room,  
calling my name like it’s the only one that matters.  
And I am still running to them,  
arms outstretched,  
believing in forever  
the way only a child can.

Let the world keep spinning.  
Let the clocks forget them.  
But in me,  
they live without age,  
without ending.

You hid her like a folded paper bird
tucked behind your ribs
a secret even your shadows
were too afraid to name.

But sometimes, when the world grew quiet,
she’d press her palm to the glass of your eyes:
a flash of laughter sharp as April rain,
a question whispered to the moon
(“Will you hurt me?”)
before you locked her back inside.

I learned to watch for her.
When you’d still, a heartbeat too long,
your voice a pendulum between yes and no,
I’d leave honeyed words on the windowsill
“It’s safe here. The night is just a blanket.
Come out, and we’ll name the stars something silly.”

You built her a fortress of “not yet” and “no one stays,”
but I swear I heard her humming once
barefoot, half-alive,
tracing circles on the cold linoleum
while you slept.

I wanted to give her the world:
a room without echoes,
a door that didn’t bruise her knuckles,
a morning where you’d both wake
and not know whose breath
was whose.

Now, I imagine her still there
the only hymn your heart ever sang true,
the uncaged thing that made you
more than just survival.
I hope she knows:
when I traced the scars on your armor,
I was searching for her fingerprints
the girl who turned your blood to wildfire,
who painted galaxies in the hollows
you called empty.
She wasn’t a fragment. She was the lens.
Through her, I saw you:
unflinching, unmasked,
alive.

I’m sick today.  
Not just in my body
but in the part of me that used to believe  
I’d wake up okay.  

It hurts to move.  
Hurts to breathe.  
Hurts to pretend I’m not tired of fighting  
just to stand.  

And I wish
that I didn’t have to do this  
alone.  

That I didn’t have to wake up  
and remember  
how heavy it is  
to keep existing  
when nothing feels like mine anymore.  

My body is sore.  
But it’s my mind
that keeps collapsing.  
Not loud.  
Not with screams.  
Just in silence
the kind that nobody sees  
because I still smile sometimes.  
Because I still say “I’m fine.”  
Because I don’t want to be a burden.  

I miss the things  
that used to give me meaning.  
The little joys  
that used to carry me  
without asking anything in return.  
Now everything I do  
feels like it costs too much.  
Even breathing.  
Even hoping.

There’s an old house
at the edge of my memory,
paint faded to whispers,
roof weathered
by quiet storms
no one else sees.

I still walk past
each evening,
pausing where roses
once bloomed,
petals lost gently
to seasons
we didn’t notice
were changing.

Windows darkened,
but reflections remain
ghosts of laughter,
voices that felt
like candles
in empty rooms,
glowing softly
with something
I still can’t name.

Inside, silence
gathers like dust
over tables set
for conversations
we never finished,
chairs waiting
patiently
for someone
to come home.

And though doors
have quietly closed,
I keep a single key
pressed against my chest
a quiet promise
never broken,
held softly
in the hollow
between missing
and letting go.

Maybe someday
you’ll pass this way,
notice curtains
move slightly
like breath,
and wonder
who lives
in the spaces
we left empty

only then realizing
it was you.

I am a library lit with a thousand tongues,  
Fluent in puzzles, in people, in plans undone  
I trace constellations in minds not mine,  
A scholar of signs, of subtext and time.  

I’ve worn every mask, played every part,  
Spoken with grace while tearing apart.  
I’ve answered questions I never lived,  
And gifted truths I could not give.  

My hands know tools from every trade,  
Blueprints etched and craftsman-made.  
Yet when I turn those hands to me,  
They tremble—unskilled, uncertain, unfree.  

I map out others like open books,  
Read between their silent looks.  
But I’m a cipher, lost in ink
A page unread, too scared to think.  

I solve their riddles, calm their storms,  
Perform the role that wisdom performs.  
But mastery hides from my own gaze,  
Like smoke in mirrors or memory's haze.  

They call me clever, sharp, well-spun  
A jack of all trades... master of none.  
But worse: I’m a stranger in my own skin,  
A craftsman locked from the world within.  

I know the gears, the wires, the code,  
I’ve carried minds like heavy loads.  
Yet I trip inside where shadows swell,  
No map to chart my private hell.  

A wielder of skills, yet bound just the same.
Not by sword, nor rule, nor written decree,
But by the self that still evades me.

I’ve tried to paint you  
on canvases stretched by dreams,  
mixing colors borrowed from sunsets,  
oceans, and moonlit whispers.  

Yet each stroke feels incomplete,  
the hues too faint, too still,  
unable to breathe  
your magic into life.  

How can I capture  
a spirit lighter than air,  
a soul like hidden music,  
in a static frame?  

Your essence eludes  
brushes and palettes,  
like trying to bottle lightning,  
or hold starlight in my palm.  

Each painting falls short,  
though I chase perfection endlessly
because art can’t contain  
what makes you beautifully alive.  

Maybe perfection lies  
in the failing, the yearning,  
knowing no color or canvas  
could ever truly hold you.

In sterile halls, cold silence screams,
hospital lights slice through dreams;
my casted arm, my leg confined,
pain more bearable than my mind.

Machines whisper rhythmic sighs
each beep a truth, each pause, a lie.
My eyes scan doors, swing left then right;
no footsteps rush to ease this night.

I search the empty chairs again,
hope extinguished, feelings thin.
How can silence feel this loud?
How can absence feel so proud?

Parents gone, their choice so clear
my heart whispers, "Wish you were here."
Did I fail, or am I unseen?
Worth defined by spaces between.

Nurses pass with hurried feet,
their fleeting smiles incomplete.
"Do you need something?" they softly say
"I need someone who wants to stay."

I sit alone with distant thoughts,
my mind tangled, stomach in knots.
If family means love, then why,
is love the thing I can't rely?

It feels like cold wind
hitting your face on a rainy day
not enough to hurt,
just enough to make you stop walking.

I miss my friend.
The one I could tell everything to,
the one I wanted to understand
down to the quietest parts of her.

I see something beautiful
a painting, a color,
a moment with no words
and I think, she would’ve loved this.

Sometimes something cool happens,
and I want to tell you right away.
It’s not life-changing—just something
I know you’d smile at,
something you’d make more fun
just by reacting to it.

And then I remember.
I don’t get to hear yours anymore, either.
No little stories,
no funny thoughts in the middle of your day.

I miss that the most
how your stories stayed with me,
long after the day had ended.

Even on the best days,
there’s something missing.

I can laugh.
I can win.
I can build the kind of life
that looks like everything I wanted
but when the day ends
and the noise dies down,
I still feel it.

That hollow echo
where something sacred used to sit.

I don’t say it out loud.
Most people wouldn’t understand
how you can have everything
and still feel like
you lost the only thing that mattered.

It’s not a name.
Not a title.
It’s the quiet certainty
that something real
once lived here.
And nothing since
has fit the same way.

Some mornings,
there’s a dream
warm,
soft-edged,
familiar.
And for a few stolen seconds,
the world makes sense again.
There’s peace.
A laugh I’d trade everything to hear.
A presence that makes the air feel right.

I wake up smiling.

Then I remember.
This is not that world.

And no matter how far I go,
how much I carry,
there’s a room in me
that never closed its door.

Still furnished.
Still lit.
Still waiting
in the quiet.

Because no matter how much joy
the world offers me
it never brings
what I miss most.

The butterfly was born
in the belly of a leaf,
where no one could see her
just a soft, blind hunger
curling through green silence.

She never saw her mother.
She never knew
if someone waited for her to arrive.

She only knew
how to eat the world
until it disappeared.

Then came the stillness
a cocoon spun from instinct and fear.
Inside,
her body came apart in the dark.
She dissolved into something
that was not her,
and waited.

When she emerged,
she shook with light.
A butterfly
delicate as breath on a mirror.
No one told her she was beautiful.
She just flew,
because the wind said go.

She didn’t know
it would only last
three days.

But oh
how she loved them.

She loved the morning dew
on dandelions too tired to bloom.
She loved the ache of sunlight
slipping through broken clouds.
She loved
landing on children
who thought she was magic
but never asked her name.

And on the third evening,
as the sky turned to ash,
she rested
on a wildflower
no one had watered.

Her wings were torn.
She couldn’t lift them.
She watched the stars come out,
one by one,
and wondered
if any of them were watching back.

When the wind came again,
she didn’t follow.
She only closed her eyes
and waited to be forgotten
gently.

In the quiet of this room,
your gift breathes softly,
a music box spinning
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,
turning each note
into whispers of your laughter,
echoes of your fingertips
that touched this very tune.

How strange,
this tiny thing, delicate as porcelain,
holds worlds within
the gentle way you smiled
as you placed it in my palm,
like handing over
a key to forever,
wrapped in melody and grace.

It spins,
and the air fills with you,
like starlight caught in sound,
reminding me of thing
you painted gold
and nights wrapped
in whispers and warmth.

This box, small enough
to hold in my hand,
vast enough
to cradle galaxies of you,
has become
more than every Christmas
and every birthday
it holds the only gift
I’ve ever needed:
your presence,
lingering, infinite,
in every note,
in every breath.

You drift back softly,  
like the memory of a song  
I once knew by heart
and just as I begin to sing again,  
you disappear into silence.

Each hello feels like sunlight  
breaking through storm clouds
warm enough to believe  
the storm is finally over,  
but fleeting enough to remind me  
I’m still caught in the rain.

It’s like something calls you away  
right when your laughter  
begins to sound familiar,  
just when your smile  
feels safe again.

I reach for you,  
hands trembling with hope,  
but my fingers close on shadows,  
empty air left colder  
by your absence.

You're always free to leave,  
yet each quiet withdrawal  
cuts deeper than words could  
a wound invisible, yet felt  
in every moment you’re not here.

But even if I don't understand  
the tides that pull you away,  
I accept this part of you,  
the hidden currents,  
the silence you need to breathe.

Because caring for you means  
loving even the spaces between us,  
holding gently  
the mysteries you keep  
just beyond my reach.

Last night,  
in sleep's strange sanctuary,  
I saw you running  
through shadows,  
your silhouette threaded  
with quiet fear
darkness chasing your heels,  
like the hidden truths  
we never spoke aloud.

Instinctively,  
my arms lifted you  
from the tangled paths,  
your breath quick  
against my neck,  
as the world behind us blurred,  
fading softly  
into echoes and mist.

Together, we climbed  
a mountain cloaked  
in velvet night
familiar, yet unknown  
the ascent steep and endless,  
each step carrying  
a silent language  
only our hearts understood.

I felt the gravity  
of every unspoken word,  
the questions hanging  
between us like stars  
in an uncertain sky.  
Yet still, we rose
above the voices,  
above the darkness,  
into quiet air  
that held only  
our shared truth.

When I woke,  
I wondered  
if mountains hold meaning  
beyond dreams
if there's something  
we still climb,  
separately, silently,  
longing to understand  
why our paths  
remain intertwined.

I watched other children from windows,
Their parents pointing at butterflies,
Explaining why the sky turns purple at dusk,
Answering "why" with patience, not sighs.

My questions echoed in empty rooms,
Bounced off walls, returned to me unanswered.
I learned to swallow them down like stones,
Heavy in a belly already hungry for more than food.

At night, I'd whisper to dust motes dancing
In the single beam of hallway light that slipped beneath my door.
They became my first science lesson,
The universe's smallest planets orbiting in my personal dark.

I pressed my small palms against encyclopedias,
Pages stuck together from disuse,
And taught myself words too big for my mouth,
Because no one was there to simplify them.

When I found a dead sparrow in the yard,
There was no one to explain death or grief.
I buried it alone with questions as its gravestone,
And learned that curiosity is sometimes paired with pain.

The other children learned wonder sitting on shoulders,
Seeing farther from the height of love.
I learned it on my knees, gathering shards of broken things,
Trying to understand what held them together before.

My curiosity wasn't nurtured it was necessary,
A rope I braided myself to climb out of the silence.
Each question formed another knot to grip,
When small hands had nothing else to hold.

Before the stars rehearsed their roles,  
before gravity sang mass into form,  
I was not matter dreaming of mind  
I was the silence before silence,  
not erased,  
but unread.

No dark,  
for dark implies the possibility of sight.  
No void,  
for even void is a presence named.  
I was the note  
before music knew it could be sung,  
an unnamed vector in a world not yet measured.

Philosophy once claimed I was nothing.  
But what is "nothing," if not the most misunderstood concept?  
Not emptiness but unmanifest.  
Not absence—but essence, yet to become.

Plato said we are born forgetting,  
that the soul knows before it sees  
perhaps what we call "birth"  
is not beginning,  
but remembering through veils.

And Leibniz wondered:  
Why is there something rather than nothing?  
Why this symphony of laws,  
this harmony pre-engraved in the bones of being?  
Might we, too, be written  
into that cosmic score?

Kant taught that behind all perception  
lies the noumenon the real,  
forever beyond the grasp of sense.  
If death is the end of appearances,  
could it not be  
the beginning of truth?

And what of consciousness  
that unyielding riddle?  
Neurons fire, but the spark is not explained.  
Subjectivity the "I" remains  
unreduced, unmeasured,  
a ghost in the formula.  
Even science, in its highest honesty,  
admits: We do not know.

So let us not pretend  
that the end is written.  
Let us not confuse silence  
with absence.

If I was nothing,  
then I was the kind of nothing  
that births galaxies.  
The same kind of nothing  
that split into stars and eyes  
and minds that now ask why.

I do not fear the end  
for what ends  
may only end from here.  
And “here” is a narrow keyhole  
through which we glimpse  
an infinite door.

So let me be everything  
in the space between
not to defy the void,  
but to dance with its mystery.

For if I return to nothing,  
let it be  
the kind of nothing  
that gave rise to this.

One day I want to paint with you
brush to canvas, worlds aligned;
to follow colors as they bloom,
a vector deep into your mind.

Your art a quiet revelation,
depths unseen, yet clear to me;
every stroke a conversation,
glimpses of infinity.

Teach me how your colors speak
subtle hues your soul invents;
guide my hand when lines grow weak,
show me shades that silence meant.

In art we’ll bridge the space between,
where minds meet beyond the known,
capturing truths the heart has seen,
painting worlds that feel like home.

And when my palette mirrors yours,
I’ll understand your silent grace,
drawing closer, opening doors,
to paint reflections of your space.

I grow,  
like rivers do
not knowing where the ocean ends,  
only that I must keep moving.

Each sunrise asks more of me  
to be wiser,  
braver,  
less like who I was.

But what if this never stops?  
What if peace  
is just a carrot on a string,  
dangling from the hand of time?

I run,  
even when I long to rest  
my own breath  
a ghost chasing me.

The road shifts beneath my feet  
stone turns to sand,  
and still I press forward,  
scared of stopping,  
scared of never arriving.

But what if the finish line
was never meant for me?
What if all this running,
all this becoming,
leads nowhere
but further from stillness?

What if I spend my whole life
searching for a place
where meaning and peace
finally hold each other
and never find it?

What if I grow
into a thousand versions of myself
but never into the one
who can just
be?

She never loved the rain  
not like those stories tell it.  
It wasn’t some whimsical dance;  
it was cold,  
and she had enough weight on her shoulders  
without the sky adding more.

But inside her,  
something still flickered
not loudly,  
not for show  
a kind of warmth that only revealed itself  
when the world wasn’t looking.

She didn’t chase illusions.  
Her dreams had roots,  
not wings
and when she imagined,  
it was with intention,  
as if even wonder  
deserved to be held carefully.

She bore her burdens  
not like armor  
but like roots  
tangled, deep,  
invisible to most  
but shaping everything above the surface.

She was not light-hearted.  
She was deep-hearted.

And the world  
impatient with stillness  
often mistook her silence for absence,  
her softness for retreat.  
But I saw the truth:

she was waiting to be seen
the way stars are:
recognized
for the light they’ve always given.