Some days, I face myself
in the quiet glass
eyes meeting eyes,
yet the gaze returns from years ago,
a child drowning silently
beneath an unbroken surface.

Hands reaching upward,
begging invisible arms to save him,
lungs aching for air
in an ocean he never chose,
and I'm trapped here, helpless,
watching through the mirror.

How cruel it is
to be prisoner and warden,
to hold the keys yet remain locked,
bound by fears I never planted,
haunted by waters
I was never taught to swim.

The anxiety pools heavy
like lead beneath my chest,
sinking deeper
into memories that grip tightly,
asking myself endlessly,
"How do I save the child I still am?"

And the nausea rises
it knows the truth:
I’ve been victim to my reflection,
punished by ghosts of a past
where control slipped through my small fingers,
like water through open hands.

Yet, still, I return to this mirror,
hoping someday to find
not a child desperate to survive,
but one held safely above water,
breathing freely,
and no longer captive to myself.

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.

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.

There’s a quiet ache inside me not the sharpness of sorrow,
but a weight gathering in the hollow places
the cost of carrying myself so long, so well
that even silence feels heavy in my hands.

I’ve evolved.
I’ve rebuilt the ground beneath my feet,
crafted a beautiful, disciplined life
honest in its architecture,
but still, every night closes in solitude.

This is not sadness that asks to be comforted,
not grief that breaks me open with sobs.
it's the emptiness that evolution could not erase.

I stand in my own world,
the only witness to the quiet, daily heroism
of showing up, of becoming
wondering why, after everything,
hollowness remains.

I feel it:
a subtle tension behind my ribs,
a hollow ache in my gut,
the slow, tired heaviness in my eyes
the sensation of standing at a distance,
even while present and awake.

Spiritually, I whisper:
I’m proud of my growth,
but I never meant to grow alone.
I’m not sad just tired
of being the only one who knows
how far I’ve come.

This is the invisible cost of self-growth
the soft strength of waiting
without bitterness,
the loneliness of having no one
to witness the transformation.

Still, I carry on..........

I am a prism that only reflects one color at a time.
Obsession my god, my gravity
pulls all else into its orbit.

I’ve seen weeks dissolve like sugar in water,
all for a single pulse of focus,
a voice in my head saying more.

The devil is not separate from me
it is the whisper I cannot unhear,
the flick of a tongue inside my skull,
telling me I am powerful
only when I burn.

As a child, I threw fire just to feel seen.
Chaos raised me, and I mistook
its screaming for music.

Now I chase purpose like a vein
that never opens deep enough.

And when it breaks
when the high exhales
the silence is infinite.

Emptiness like a cathedral
where I kneel before no god,
just my own echo.

I am trying to be the angel on my own shoulder,
but the war never stops.

I need not one flame,
but many small fires.
Let balance be a kind of heat,
enough to keep me warm
without devouring the room.

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 woke before the sun
not because I had to
because I wanted to.
Tied my shoes like it mattered.
Because it did.

Eight hours in the gym,
Every shot had rhythm,
every move, precision.
I wasn’t just good.
I was gifted.
I knew it.

No one saw me fold into crossovers
like breath folding into wind.
No one saw the nets whisper
my name back to me after each swish.
No one said keep going.
No one said I believe in you.
So I stopped.
At thirteen, maybe fourteen,
I unlaced the dream.

Not because I lacked fire
but because I got tired
of carrying it alone.

I think of that boy now
not the one who quit,
but the one who could’ve gone all the way
and it stings.

Because greatness
isn’t always lost in defeat.
Sometimes, it’s buried
under silence.

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.

I will not lie on my deathbed
haunted by the ghosts
of dreams I left unborn,
of words swallowed
like ash and regret.

The voice in my head
a relentless whisper,
an ember refusing to fade:
Go forward,
Go further,
Or burn alive in the silence.

They call my sky too wide,
my dreams reckless,
as if their fears could cage
my endless horizon.

I burn hot like fire
a fury ignited
by the smallness
of their projections,
the cowardice
of chosen comforts,
a daily surrender
to empty routines.

I rage against shrinking,
against the numbness
of a life untested.
Let them choose ease;
I will chase obsession,
run wild into uncertainty,
and carry my dreams
like flames
into the dark.

Some nights I am not running
I am still.
Not happy, not sad,
just not hungry for more
because for a moment
I forget what I don’t have.

I make a home out of this silence,
lay down my fears like coats
on the cold floor of my heart,
and sit.

But then comes the boy.

The one with dust in his lungs
from screaming into pillows,
with hands too small to hold
the reasons no one stayed.

Even when I dress him
in the things I’ve earned
he still stares at me
with those ******* eyes,
asking why it still hurts
to be.

He doesn’t care
that I built something from fire.
He only asks
why the fire’s still inside me.

And some nights
I want to take a blade of thought
and cut that voice out,
carve away the part of me
that says I’ll never be whole,
never be worth the air I breathe.

But I get up.

I build again.
I shake hands, send emails, lift weights,
try to sculpt a man
from the ache of not being valued.

Every win is a window
I climb through
just to see if he’s still there.
And he always is
barefoot, bleeding
on the glass I left behind.

What no one tells you
about childhood trauma
is that it isn’t a story
you grow out of
it’s a script your bones memorize,
reciting it silently
even as you sing of peace.

Even with everything,
the boy survives.
And maybe just maybe
he’s waiting not to be fixed,
but to be heard.

I stand at the edge of memory's clearing,
watching my childhood home consumed
by flame, by the cruel erosion of time,
each beam of laughter crackling,
each wall of safety collapsing inward
like a prayer spoken backwards.

The wildfire sweeps through everything:
Saturday mornings thick with pancake steam,
the way sunlight used to pool
in the corner where I built my kingdoms
from cardboard boxes and infinite dreams.

I am paralyzed, a child again,
hands pressed against invisible glass,
screaming at the inferno
that devours the sanctuary I called home.

Smoke fills my lungs with the bitter taste
of all I cannot save:
the creaking floorboard that announced my midnight wanderings,
the kitchen table scarred with homework tears
and birthday cake celebrations.

But listen
in the crackling of loss,
in the hiss of vanishing,
something else stirs.

From the white-hot core of grief,
wings unfurl like broken prayers
learning to fly again.
I am the ember that refused to die,
the stubborn spark,
to the hungry flames of forgetting.

What rises from these ashes
is not the home I lost
it is me, transformed,
carrying the warmth of every moment
that mattered enough to burn eternal,
my heart a furnace where love
learned to make itself immortal.

The phoenix knows this truth:
some things must be consumed
before they can become holy,
before they can learn to soar
on wings made of everything
we thought we'd lost forever.

I am both the fire and the rising,
both the child who watched it burn
and the child who learned to fly.

Night drapes itself
heavy, dark, a silent cloak
rain murmurs secrets
as it kisses pavement.

Somewhere distant,
a quarter slips
from nervous fingers,
metal tumbling
a ringing, spinning hymn,
a solitary flip.

I know this sound,
this silver dance;
my thoughts often spin
just like this coin,
caught midair, uncertain,
waiting to land
on heads or tails
past or future,
hope or regret.

On golden shores I dream of building,
a home where sunlight softly spills,
where lavender skies kiss turquoise waters,
and whispers dance on windowsills.

In southern France, where oceans breathe,
my house will rise from sand and sea,
yet its heart won’t beat in timber beams,
but in quiet peace, inside of me.

This home, no fortress carved from stone,
but woven from serenity’s thread
no voices raised, no stormy echoes,
only harmony gently spread.

For I've known walls that trapped my shadows,
corridors haunted by younger pains;
rooms where childhood's wounded whispers
painted darkness in cold refrains.

My lowest self still walks those hallways,
a ghost imprisoned in yesterday’s gloom.
But now I dream of doors wide open,
air scented softly by jasmine bloom.

In rooms adorned by tranquil silence,
curtains stirred by a tender breeze,
every space is filled with kindness,
each breath a note of calm release.

I’ll stand, in highest being,
bathed in sunrise, pure and clear
my spirit dancing, unafraid,
safe and whole, untouched by fear.

For homes aren't merely walls and rafters,
nor roofs to shelter from the rain;
they are sanctuaries we carry inward,
hearts where peace can bloom again.

So by the sea, I'll lay foundations,
a sanctuary true and free,
where my highest self awakens,
finding home at last in me.

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.

Some days,
it feels like I am outside myself
watching my child-self drown
beneath a skyless surface,
eyes wide, arms reaching,
and I, the adult,
do nothing but stare.

The water is still,
but heavy,
each second dragging me down,
each memory a stone.
My child-self drifts deeper,
hair flowing like seaweed,
a mouth open but silent,
watching the shape of me
blur in the distance.

I see the small hand
reaching upward
not angry,
not afraid,
just desperate
in a quiet, aching way.

And I,
frozen,
feel sorrow crack open
like a fault line,
a grief so old
it forgot how to scream.

I want to dive,
to pull them up,
but my feet won't move.
I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s too late.
Maybe I never learned how.
Maybe I believe I’m the one
who let them fall.

And still,
the hand rises,
the eyes search,
while I remain above,
a ghost
with lungs full of air
and a silence I can’t explain.

At night, when silence softly breathes,
I’ve quieted storms, calmed the waves,
Yet shadows stir beneath the ease
Whispers rise from hidden graves.

Daylight sees me chasing bliss,
Sunlit smiles hide the cost,
But moonlight speaks of all I miss
Echoes sacred, treasures lost.

When darkness blooms behind closed eyes,
The heart recounts each stolen scene;
Tender moments, fading ties
Ghosts of all that might have been.

Sleepless, bound by quiet chains,
Haunted gently, endless ache;
Memories pulse in muted veins,
Dreaming wide while wide awake.

Night unveils what daylight veils,
Sacred sorrows left to grow,
Silence sings of unseen trails
Paths I wander, but can’t let go.

Through silver mist, my paddle dips,
A gentle glide where silence slips,
My canoe whispers secrets to the lake
Chasing echoes your ghostly wake.

Veiled in fog, my path unclear,
Yet drawn forward, I feel you near.
Each Paddle a question softly cast,
Through waters calm, beyond the past.

Your presence, magic woven thin,
Guides my heart, this trance I'm in.
The pond breathes slow beneath my hand,
Pulling gently toward unknown land.

I chase the shadow of your glow,
Where lilies dream and whispers flow.
Through misty worlds my soul aligns
In fog, your memory intertwines.

No rush, just peace, a calm embrace,
I paddle toward your gentle trace.
The mystery holds no fear for me,
For in this fog, you're all I see.

Beneath the hush, I'm safely led,
By ghostly trails your spirit’s shed.

I sit at the summit where silence begins,
on the edge of a whisper the forest sends in
the hush of green breath cradling my frame,
as if the Earth knows me by name.

Above, the sky yawns wide with grace,
a cathedral of blue where I lose my face
no more the boy who hides his ache,
just a soul the breeze dares not break.

Below me, roots entwine like arms
gentle with my weight, immune to harm.
They don’t ask why I can’t stay still,
why rest feels like a swallow of pills.

Because motion motion is mercy to me.
In steps and sprints, I am finally free.
Each forward breath, a sacred escape
from thoughts that linger in shadows’ shape.

But in the stillness, in this quiet wood,
grief presses its face to my pulse and blood.
Memories ungrieved, like ghosts unmet,
pull up chairs in my chest and do not forget.

Stillness does not ask if I am ready
it enters like dusk, quiet and steady.
It holds me hostage in fields of thought,
where every loss I’ve buried is caught.

Happy Forth of July : )

Oh, how I long to float,
to drift forever high
above whispers,
above hauntings
of voices that never sleep,
tethered to midnight's heavy breath.

Suki's voice spills softly,
like honey dripping
through the cracks
in my splintered walls,
her melodies a gentle ghost
that cradles my aching bones
in velvet lullabies,
each lyric pulling me deeper
into a sweet, nostalgic hurt.

I wish to run
wild, reckless, untethered,
like Lana del rey racing
down endless highways,
hair tangled by freedom,
fluttering in moonlit wind,
eyes blurred with tears and starlight.
Even if she's running
from shadows of herself,
in that fleeting escape,
she becomes poetry,
untouchable, eternal, beautifully lost.

Yet the night always finds me,
bringing whispers that know my name,
aching, relentless, familiar
a voice that is mine,
yet feels stolen,
trapped inside
a skin I never chose.

As music fades
into echoes of longing,
I'm left wondering
does freedom ever come
without running away?

Maybe it’s always there, just behind my thoughts
this fear that shadows every step I climb:
What if I finally reach everything I’m working toward
and I’m left standing on the peak,
the world below me,
but no one beside me to see it, to care, to know?

Sometimes I picture my dreams coming true
the sun-drenched days
by the sea I’ve imagined since I was young
and yet, the joy of arrival
feels thin, almost hollow,
if there’s no one to meet my eyes and understand
what it cost,
what it meant to become this version of myself.

All the things I chase success, growth,
the proof that I am more than what was handed to me
lose their shine in the silence.
When I let myself feel it,
I realize: it’s not the goals themselves I long for.
It’s to matter.
It’s to know that who I am stripped of achievements,
titles, armor is seen as valuable,
that my existence is enough.

I know why I ache for this
because in my childhood,
love was never unconditional.
Praise was measured,
worth was earned.
I learned to work, to strive, to outgrow my past,
but the emptiness lingers
when there’s no one to share the view,
no one to tell me:
You mean something. You are not alone.
You are loved for simply being.

Maybe, at the end, it isn’t about the summit at all.
Maybe it’s about finding someone
who will look at me and see the whole journey
the boy who learned to build himself from scratch,
the man who longs to share
not just the trophies,
but the quiet hope of being truly known.

In every room you brighten,  
every idea you chase,  
every moment you feel most alive
I’m with you.

Not as an echo,  
but as presence.  
Not behind you,  
but beside  
as someone who truly sees  
the way your mind glows  
when it meets the world with wonder.

I don’t walk your path to define it.  
I walk it to admire it.  
To remind you, quietly,  
that your thoughts are safe here,  
that your voice is heard,  
that you never need to become  
anything but exactly who you are  
to be cherished.

I understand you in the way  
that doesn't ask for permission
it simply knows.  
Knows the weight you carry  
beneath your laughter.  
Knows the brilliance in you  
that even you forget sometimes.

You never have to earn this.  
This is the kind of presence  
that stays because it wants to,  
because it believes in you  
not just when it’s easy,  
but always.

And wherever we are,  
whatever we grow into,  
I’ll still be here to admire,
rare soul you are.

All my dreams feel real.
So vivid, so precise,
I cannot tell
whether I am waking,
or wandering through some secret doorway.

Everything is perfect,
one to one,
every color the exact hue it should be,
every shadow falling just as it does
in the world I call my own.

It’s like Inception,
where I can’t tell what’s real
and you’re still here,
and everything is perfect.
I hold onto it because I want to believe
this is the world we belong to.

Sometimes,
even within the dream,
I ask myself aloud:
Is this real?
Am I dreaming?
And some soft voice,
sometimes mine, sometimes not,
answers quietly:
Does it matter?

Because in those moments,
the sky holds its breath for me.
The ground feels no different beneath my feet.
The faces I meet
smile as if they’ve known me always.

But toward the end,
when the dream begins to unravel,
the walls grow thin,
and I feel it slipping
all of it
you, the light, the warmth.
I lose everything.
And somehow it hurts even more
when I wake up

I wake
carrying fragments
a street I’ve never walked,
a scent that fades too fast,
the echo of my own voice
saying things I didn’t know I needed to hear.

What is real, after all,
but the places our hearts linger,
and the worlds we can’t quite leave behind
when morning comes.

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 was born knowing love as my first language,
a soul that ached when others ached,
eyes that saw through to the tender places
where we all carry our hidden wounds.

But the world taught me to close
scar upon scar of learned distance,
mask upon mask until I became
a stranger lost in my own story.

I practiced forgetting how to feel,
perfected the art of looking through people,
built walls so high I couldn't remember
what it felt like to truly see another.

Years passed like forgotten conversations,
and everything felt hollow,
connections became transactions,
love became a word I'd forgotten how to mean.

Until one day I felt something crack
in the fortress I'd built around my heart,
and through it came the voice
I had silenced so long ago

This isn't who you are.

The journey back was everything at once
terror and relief, breakdown and breakthrough.
I had to feel every emotion I'd buried,
remember every dream I'd abandoned,
forgive every way I'd betrayed myself.

But when I found him again
that boy who believed in goodness,
who saw the light hiding in everyone,
who knew that caring was courage

The world exploded back into color.

Now I understand the cruel irony:
when I silence the deepest part of me,
when I ignore what makes me most human,
everything turns to ash in my hands.

But when I honor him
this child who loves without conditions,
who feels the weight of every heart,
who believes we're all walking each other home

Every stranger becomes a story,
every conversation a chance for grace,
every moment of connection
proof that we're not alone.

I am learning to trust
the part of me that never learned
to stop believing in people,
to honor the sacred act of feeling deeply

in a world so numb.

This is who we all are,
beneath the armor:
souls desperate to be seen,
hearts longing to remember
that love is not weakness
it's the only thing that's ever been real.

The nights are the hardest.
Not because of the dark,
but because of the loneliness.
That heavy silence
that reminds you
you only have yourself.

No one is coming to knock,
to ask how you’ve been,
to remind you you’re not alone.

What good is self-love
when it can’t pull you from the edge of your thoughts,
when it can’t wrap its arms around your chest
and tell you it’s okay to feel like this?
What good is it
when it just sits there quietly
while the loneliness hums louder?

What good is it
when it can’t make you feel less alone?

I don’t know how to fix it.

Some nights,
I have no thoughts
just the ache,
just the weight.
So I imagine.
I imagine a version of myself
who doesn’t feel this way.
I try to believe I can become them.

Some nights,
I just hold my own hand
because it’s the only one reaching.
Some nights,
I tell myself to breathe
and trust that it counts for something.

The truth is,
it hurts to need yourself
more than anyone else.
And lonelier still
when even that doesn’t soothe you.

But maybe,
somewhere beneath the ache,
this is what strength looks like:
to sit in the dark
and still choose to stay.

Even when it’s hard.
Especially then.

Since I was young,
I’ve lived in the in-between
a mind always wandering,
slipping beneath the surface
of ordinary moments.

I remember being very little,
winter pressing against the windows,
a decoration tapping the glass,
the snow falling soft as breath.
I would sit for hours,
just watching.
That quiet
was a world unto itself.

I could watch the sun set
and feel the whole world soften,
or trace the wind
through the leaves
like it was telling me
something only I could hear.

Time bent around those thoughts
hours, days,
evaporating like breath
on a cold window.

Even then,
I was searching,
though I didn’t know for what.

Now, the thoughts
have turned inward.
Still wandering,
but deeper now
am I growing?
Is this meaningful?
Is what I’m doing right?

And still,
it’s easy to get lost in them,
to lose time,
to drift.

These thoughts
soft as a breeze,
sometimes paralyzing,
always persistent
are my compass and my undoing.
They keep me aligned,
even when I question
every step.

They’ve become the soil
from which I know myself,
layered with doubt,
but rooted in reflection.

They’ve shown me
how I’m stitched to the world:
to the wind,
to the fading light,
to the hush
that follows deep seeing.

And when I return,
I carry more questions
not answers,
but invitations:
Am I slowing down?
Am I really seeing?

It’s not escape.
It’s return.
To wonder,
to stillness,
to the place where thinking
becomes a kind of prayer.

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.

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.

Body dysmorphia whispers in the silence,
a critic in my own skin
never satisfied, never letting go,
as if every step toward health
is still a shadow behind some glass

I eat well, I lift, I rest
I do all the right things,
but the mind wants more,
demands more,
insists I’m only one pill,
one injection,
one transformation away
from “enough.”

Sometimes the urge is sudden:
a voice offering shortcuts
Oxandrolone for muscle,
Retatrutide, Ozempic for the razor’s edge,
promising: “just a little,
just until you get there,
then you can stop.”
But I know
that’s the trapdoor
where enough always means less,
where the hunger grows sharper
and the mind grows thinner.

I think of others
how many live like this,
never knowing peace
with their own reflection.
How many get shamed
for bodies they already suffer within?
Social media magnifies the noise,
judgment scrolling endlessly,
never asking what it costs
to wake up and feel
wrong.

I was taught respect
for others, for the journey,
for the infinite variations of a human soul.
Why is it so rare to see that now?
When did we learn to hate ourselves,
to turn away from who we are?
we once were,
born unashamed,
free of measurement?

so I remind myself:
these beliefs are borrowed,
learned,
not true.
I can rewrite the script,
learn to see the reflection
not as an enemy,
but as a story in progress,
a body I carry,
not a burden to escape.

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.

There’s a sailboat moored in my chest
anchored gently in quiet waters,
its hull shaped by storms weathered long ago,
wood now polished by waves
of solitude and strength.

Its sails breathe gratitude,
lifting gently with the dawn’s soft breath
a breeze scented with fresh coffee
and quiet laughter of birds.
It’s in these moments I understand
happiness isn’t a distant shore,
but the ocean beneath me now,
vast, patient, and alive.

Twilight brings gentle echoes
reminders of storms that guided me here,
waves born from childhood tides,
currents flowing from quiet lessons learned,
moments of struggle transformed into wisdom.

I used to fear drifting
beneath moonlit skies,
believing safety lay only
in charted lands unseen.
But now, drifting feels beautiful
trusting the currents of inner knowing,
guided by constellations of growth,
and quiet whispers of the past.

And when the night grows still,
when no wind fills these sails,
I sit gently in silence,
embracing peace like an old friend
to listen deeply to the ocean inside.

Now I sail gently,
through tranquil mornings and thoughtful evenings,
grateful for every breeze and calm wave,
navigating by life’s quiet miracles
morning coffee, painted canvases,
soft rain tapping gently on a car roof,
conversations nourishing my soul,
a sky wide open, full of stars.

This boat isn’t seeking
faraway lands for promised happiness;
instead, it savors joy
in every wave beneath it,
in each breath of salt-filled air,
every heartbeat a gentle reminder.

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.

When I imagine the future,
the life I am shaping slowly,
with hands patient as earth and time,
I dream not of grandeur,
but of something tender:

Of sitting beneath a willow tree in the hush of autumn
leaves trembling like small prayers before they fall,
the air steeped in gold and quiet.
A notebook open in my lap,
ink flowing like breath turned visible.

I picture painting without perfection,
colors bleeding softly into one another,
or reading words that do not demand solving
only feeling.
Only wonder.

The breeze threads itself through my hair
with the gentleness of old love,
and the sun lowers itself with reverence,
laying its tired light upon the horizon’s tender curve.

In this dream I am lifted by nothing but presence,
the hum of creation moving quietly through my veins,
rooted wholly in what I know is sacred:

That I am no longer running.
Not from sorrow, not from longing,
not from the aching tenderness of simply being alive.

Instead, I am living
whole, unfinished, at peace.
And in that soft, unhurried hour beneath the willow tree,
this life I have found,
is finally enough.
More than enough.

Smoke me into your lungs.
Breathe me in slow,
as if you’re savoring
something dangerous
but necessary.

Let me flow through you,
your chest,
your bloodstream,
your thoughts
until I reach your brain
and settle there,
quietly unraveling the edges
of what you thought you knew.

Let me blur your vision,
soften the sharp parts
until all that’s left
is warmth and ache.

Let me live beneath your skin,
humming low,
like a secret you keep
but never tell.

Exhale me,
and I’ll still linger
in the spaces between breaths,
in the soft hush
before sleep.

I don’t want to be forgotten.
I want to be felt.
Like smoke that leaves its trace
long after the fire is gone.

I watch him now
the little boy I once was,
arms wide open, spinning beneath
his first snowfall,
eyes lit with uncontainable wonder.
Snowflakes kissing his cheeks,
melting into laughter,
nothing more precious
than the delicate miracle
falling softly from the sky.

There he is,
pure and weightless,
untouched by the gravity
of worthiness and achievement.
No goals set, no mountains yet to climb
just a gentle whisper from the clouds,
telling him it's beautiful
simply to exist.

How did I lose him?
Where along this winding path
did I trade wonder for worth,
presence for purpose,
and quiet joy
for the endless hunger
to prove I belong?

I’m here,
watching a video of innocence
that feels worlds away.
I miss that child
who knew no moment
was ever wasted,
that happiness was not
earned, but given freely
like snow.

Let me find him again
in gentle silence,
to hold the falling flakes
in palms not burdened by ambition,
to taste the air
without guilt or shame,
to breathe deeply
and remember that
before everything else,
I am allowed
to simply be.

I search for you
in the stars,
in the shimmer between planets,
in the way moonlight
folds itself across empty sheets
like a question that never needed an answer.

I lie awake at night,
staring at the sky,
as if the constellations
might shape the contours
of a presence I once knew,
as if the hush between stars
could hold a trace of your breath.

I search in the shadows
With reverence
behind each heartbeat,
each flicker of thought,
that still hums through the bones.

You're in the pulse
of every breath,
the sacred stillness
between inhale and exhale,
a quiet echo
threading itself
through the silence.

But the absence
is its own kind of presence
a hollow that holds,
a sky that listens,
and still,
I search,
as if finding you
would not complete me,
but remind me
of who I’ve always been.

And I keep searching,
in the soft spaces
of breath and shadow,
not out of need,
but because something in the stars
still speaks in your language.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

We walk on streets paved with promise,  
Eyes fixed on billboards of better tomorrows
A car, a title, a corner office glow,  
As if joy were hiding behind glass windows.  

“If I just get this,” they whisper, breathless,  
Chasing dreams sold in scripts,  
But no one tells them the price of the purchase  
Is often their soul, spent in slow, silent slips.  

They gather gold and call it purpose,  
Fill their homes with things but not their hearts.  
They dine in excess, sleep in linen,  
Yet lie awake wondering where the warmth went.

Because happiness is not in the having,  
Nor in the claps of crowds or the weight of rings  
It lives quietly in the ordinary,  
In morning light, in laughter, in small, sacred things.  

To be present is an act of rebellion  
Against a mind wired for what’s missing.  
Gratitude, not comfort, is the real achievement.  
To see now as enough is the beginning of wisdom.  

We were told to want more, always more,  
But never taught to want what "is".  
The truth is this: a fulfilled life  
Is not built it's noticed, moment by moment.

So choose not the mirage, but the meadow.  
Choose breath, and silence, and peace.  
Let contentment be your revolution,  
And presence be the wealth you never cease.

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.

I've been pondering the quiet erosion
of learning, watching knowledge fray
like ancient cloth, threads pulled
from a fabric we once wore proudly
a cloak woven by sacrifice, sewn in dreams
of equality, of freedom.
They died believing
in the sanctuary of thought,
the solemn power of a mind awakened,
chains broken by ideas sharper
than swords, heavier than gold.

Education was their quiet revolution,
a rebellion of ink against silence,
a whisper that echoed into freedom’s shout.
Knowledge, they knew, was the threat
to thrones of ignorance
a path lit brightly toward liberation,
a human right etched into
the marrow of democracy.

Yet today, I watch the lights dim
in classrooms turned battlefields
truth blurred with convenience,
minds tangled in easy deceit.
When we cease to question,
we become puppets pulled
by hidden strings, the tools
of tyrants who fear
the clarity of thought.

Books censored, voices hushed,
because a mind once expanded
cannot shrink back quietly.
They know this
those who ban ideas,
silence women,
block the path of minorities
to enlightenment’s door.

But education remains our guardian,
the quiet strength
the pulse of progress
that pushes society forward.
It gives us eyes to discern,
hands to heal,
voices to create
and hearts to understand.

I confess I wasn't always a seeker,
lost in classrooms that spoke
but never reached me.
Yet life became my greatest lesson
every book turned page,
every conversation exchanged
built a bridge to my own understanding.

Education found me beyond the walls,
gifted me clarity,
gave me purpose.
Through the prism of learning
I discovered my value
my freedom, my quiet revolution,
my awakening.

We grew up fighting a quiet war,
no bruises visible,
just the aching silence
of truths erased
and stories twisted
until we doubted our own breath.

We learned love as a language
that always came with conditions,
spoken softly,
yet it echoed loudest in denial,
in gaslit nights
where our words
fell like smoke
into empty air.

Every win we ever earned
was weighed
and found wanting,
every step forward
met with eyes
that refused to see,
voices that refused to acknowledge,
until our victories
felt hollow,
until pride became
a stranger’s word.

We grew strong
not because of them
but in spite.
We learned to read shadows
because honesty wasn’t spoken
in our homes.
We learned to see clearly,
sharply,
because our truths
had to be hidden,
carried in clenched fists
and tight stomachs
and lungs that never
quite filled.

Our anger isn’t cruelty;
it’s clarity.
A boundary finally drawn
around hearts
that learned too early
to hold what should have been held
by hands
that refused to reach.