Today they slip vaccines into vegetables,
tomorrow they’ll cram the vegans into your Lunchables.
Boardrooms full of hollow men in silk ties,
selling us the end of the world in family-size.

Colonialism isn’t gone, it’s pacing the floor,
a parasite knocking on every door.
And if it isn’t dead, then swing the shovel faster!
because when the chains crack, when the empire shatters,
the earth will roar its own name,
and that roar will last forever.

I lost you.
Your heartbeat lingers—
A shadow pressed to mine.

I loved too fiercely.
I remember too well.

I wait.
I breathe ghosts.
I am chained
Forever
To you.

I have lost my way.
I have lost the pulse,
The weight,
The fire of you.
I have lost the seconds
That trembled beneath our hands,
That quaked between our breaths,
That cracked the world open
And left me hollow,
Reaching,
Always reaching.

I know—I was cruel.
I know—I was blind.
I know—I let fear twist love
Into shards that cut us both.
But you are gone.
And I cannot remember
The quiet violence of your heart,
The way it pressed against mine,
Stopping time,
Bending the world,
Birthing a fragile, trembling eternity
I could never hold.

I did not know it then.
I know it now.
I could not have wanted more.
I could not have loved more.
I could not have lived more.
I could not have lost more.

I wait.
I wait in the echo,
In the shadow,
In the hollow you carved in me.
I clutch your ghost
Like air,
Like fire,
Like the only truth I know.
I pray you remember me
The way I remember you—
Relentless.
Unforgiving.
Obscene in its devotion.

Until that day comes—
If that day ever comes—
I will rot in your absence,
I will breathe only the ghost of you,
I will speak only to your shadow,
I will be the echo of your heartbeat,
The imprint of your lips,
The mark of your leaving,
The living residue of your love,
Haunted,
Consumed,
Chained,
Forever,
By you.

I believe in the story.
Not fate.
Not prophecy.
But the raw, uncut story of my life—
written in blood,
in silence,
in the suffering I cannot escape.

Life strikes.
Life gives.
Always both.
Always with a price.

I am a tree—
rooted in pain,
stretching toward a sky
that has never answered me.

And still,
I persist.
Each year as my leaves desert me,
I cling to this ever-spinning coil—
with cool pleasure,
with sharp pain,
trusting I might survive another fall,
to be woken
by another living spring.

The world is broken.
But I remain.

When the pyre comes for me,
its bones will be my bones.
My ribs will crack like dry timber,
my marrow will hiss and spit—
oil feeding the flame.
I will burn by my own fire,
the source and the sacrifice,
fuel and funeral together.
Every splinter of bone,
every ember of flesh,
rising as smoke
to prove I lived,
to prove I expired.

Because I have walked the unknown road.
I have swallowed its dust,
bled in its silence,
and I have come back with this:

I believe in the story.
And the story—
is me.

I lie half-submerged in lukewarm, murky water,
skin pruned and ghost-pale beneath the grime.
The faucet drips like a slow, ticking clock,
and escape is all I can think about.

Soap **** clings to my ribs like guilt.
My hair floats around me like drowned seaweed,
and I wonder if this is the closest I’ll ever come
to peace.

I’ve tried it all—
breathing exercises, therapy, forgiveness—
but the water keeps cooling,
and the voices keep rising.

They promise a bath will cleanse you—
that heat can smooth the edges of everything,
that water can cradle you like comfort.
So why do I still feel so ruined?

The tiles above glare down like judges.
Steam coils over me like a spirit without a name.
I whisper to no one: maybe this isn’t living at all.

I keep waiting for something holy—
for a baptism, a burning away, a rebirth.
But the warmth never lasts long enough.
The healing never comes.

So I start to wonder
if the real mercy
is just a few inches deeper.
Letting the water fill my lungs
like a soft kind of forgiveness.

They say drowning feels like falling asleep.
Maybe that’s the closest I’ll ever get
to being saved.

It’s only a little further.
My lips already brush the surface.
If I just loosen my body, relax,
let myself float,
vanish—

Maybe that’s the cure I’ve been chasing all along.

One final act of self-preservation
disguised as disappearance.
If I surrender fully—
just for a moment—

I might finally feel relief.

Was there ever a moment you meant what you said?
You take like it’s owed—and ghost when it’s time to give back.
Your sorrys sound sweet,
But sugar can’t patch a crack.

You talk like a poet with nothing to say,
A glass house built in the wind—
No walls, no warmth,
Just light slipping in.

I smiled too long at your silence,
Thought you were deep—
But you were just empty.

We’re shaped by heartbreak.
You skipped the part where pain makes us better.
You wear your pride like armor,
But even armor breaks.

Isn’t the silence loud when you’re alone?
Doesn’t the cold reach your bones?
You wear quiet like camouflage,
But I see the shape of the wound.

I won’t let your shadows catch me.
My rage sings in a quiet key—
A whispered fury,
A lullaby with teeth.
I’ve lit candles in darker caves.
A flame sharpened to a blade.

So smile if you must—
But I burn—with intention,
And leave light behind.

I sleep in layers, thick with doubt,
My breath fogs the fear I can’t drown.
The walls don’t speak, but they recall
The nights I never warmed at all.
My pulse, a thread, a borrowed line,
A promise stitched from borrowed time.

Each part of me still shakes alone,
Built from ice, and frost, and bone.

This is the temperature of staying alive:
A quiet burn behind my eyes.
Not dead, not whole, just barely right,
I hold my body like a lie.
Too cold to dream, too numb to cry,
Chronic hypothermia eating me alive.

My fingers twitch, they never bloom,
I strike a match in every room.
But nothing sticks, the heat won’t stay;
It flees, like every prayer I made.
They say I feel too much, too fast,
But I freeze, let everything pass.

I fake the fire, wear the role,
But frostbite’s claimed my frozen soul.

This is the temperature of staying alive:
A pulse beneath a glassy sky.
A body built on borrowed light,
Dressing in silence, sleeping in spite.
Too cold to beg, too proud to try
This is the temperature of staying alive.

I used to dance in softer skins,
But time tore holes I couldn’t mend.
Now every hug feels like a test,
And every kiss comes secondhand.
If you see me, don’t look away:
I’m just surviving, day by day.

Still here, still cold, still undefined,
I walk through fire without ignite.
Too close to love, too far to try
This is the temperature of staying alive.