We wear it
From outside within
the mask,
like a skin too tight,
Just to cover our feelings
Our sin
aching from the truth we shove beneath
the hunger,
the void,
Opioids are the new thing
the frantic search for something to fill
Aimless or something to enlighten
Or thrill
a heart that's been hollow since birth,
While we wonder in wonder
While we stumble
The earth

We run.
We hide.
We lie.
We try.
Tell them we’re fine,
but the cracks in our smiles
are deep rivers
drowned in quiet screams,
Filled with self lies.

We post,
we boast,
we boast,
The most
we’re ghosts.
Hoping someone will see the glossy surface
While we resurface
and forget the rotting beneath,
The Hollow gums
With no teeth
Release

We twist ourselves to fit
the mould
to be loved,
to be liked,
to be ******* wanted,
never confronted,
A million selfies
a million likes
but the soul
just shivers in silence,
telling ourselves
We alright.

And it never stops,
this game we play,
this price we pay,
shuffling in the shadows,
desperate to escape the mirror,
but it's us we’re running from,
us we’re hiding from,
the thoughts we confide
In our minds
Never right now wrong.

We drink,
we ****,
we party,
we fight.
Chasing highs,
chasing numbs,
but we can’t outrun the ache that seeps through
the pores of our skins,
where do we begin?
the weight of our own pain
always pulling,
always dragging us down,
sinking blame
sinking shame.

They say we’re lost,
but who isn’t?
We all wear the same wounds
the ones we’ve learned to ignore,
from then
from before
to pretend they don’t bleed,
they grow from doubt seed.
We’ve learned to stitch them up with hashtags,
with trends,
with the lies of "we're fine."
then a rope in the end.

But no one is fine.
Not the faces you see on screens,
You cant see my heart
For a heart is unseen.
not the ones at the bar,
not the ones in the bed next to you.
We all break in ways we can't say,
we wear our brokenness like fashion
hidden from day until day
and it never stays in place,
no matter how hard we erase.

So we lie.
And we hide.
And we wait for someone to pull back the curtain
living a life uncertain
and see us for what we really are
just people,
Broken,
fragile and fractured,
screaming in silence,
waiting to be noticed,
waiting to be loved
by anyone,
is it not how it is?
even if it's just for a moment,
even if it's just for the click,
even for a smile that's fake
But real quick.

But even then,
the ache remains,
Hidden pains.
The need.
The emptiness.
truth
And the mask gets thicker,
fitting tighter
until it suffocates,
until we can’t breathe,
on the news
he pulled the trigger.

We say it’s all just part of the game
the chasing,
the hurting,
the pretending,
hurt that's unrelenting,
But inside, we’re all the same
broken people
cracked in more ways than one
scrambling for pieces
we can’t even see.

And maybe that’s the truth:
We’re not lost.
We’re not found.
We’re just stuck,
staring at each other in a room full of mirrors,
Craving connection
But we cant touch ourselves
you looking at me
me looking at you
too afraid to admit
we're all waiting
for someone else
to look in and see
the bleeding
that won’t stop.

Nobody knows the secrets.
Not the ones that fester like open wounds,
not the ones that slither through my teeth at night,
curling around my gums like parasites,
whispering names I swore I'd forget.

They live in the marrow, crackling like frostbite,
in the weight of a swallowed scream,
in the shadow that bends wrong in the mirror.
They don’t sleep.
They don’t die.
They just rot.

The raven comes when the night is thick,
when the walls lean in like old drunks,
when the wind hums a funeral hymn.
Perched on my ribs, claws sunk deep,
he pecks at the soft parts—
at memories wrapped in barbed wire,
at the dreams I stitched shut,
at the roads that led nowhere but back to myself.

He drips black ink into my lungs,
each breath a smear, a stain, a confession.
"You’ve carried them too long," he says,
but I can’t let go.
Not yet.
Not ever.

Secrets like these don’t dissolve.
They calcify.
They sink into the bones,
settle in the cracks of the skull,
etch themselves into the eyes of the dead.

I see them when I sleep
cities swallowed by dusk,
faces shifting like smoke,
hands reaching from doorways that never existed.
I dream of places I’ve never been,
but somehow remember
the gutter stink, the broken streetlight hum,
the damp crawl of something breathing beneath the floorboards.

The raven knows.
He picks at my silence,
spreads his wings,
and the room dissolves into black feathers,
falling slow as ashes from a fire that never stops burning.

I wake up gasping,
lungs full of fog,
mouth full of dirt,
secrets clawing at the walls of my throat.

One day, they’ll consume me.
One day, I’ll open my mouth and nothing will come but smoke.
One day, I’ll be nothing but echoes and dust,
and the raven will sit on my bones,
whispering all the words I was too afraid to say.

The Weight of Silence
A shadow at my back,
I'm losing track
Never looking back
flip it
I feel it every step,
creeping on the ground
grip it
where I once stood tall.
Can’t escape what haunts me
a breath that cuts,
a stare that burns,
a world cold,
that keeps churning,
while words keep burning.

The world outside,
too loud, too fake, remake
people smiling like knives
cheating lives,
slutty wives
husbands that aren't there
broken stares
hidden in silk sleeves.
I see it in their eyes
the hunger,
the emptiness
we’re all starving,
but we’ve learned to feed
on the bones of others.

I was born to question,
seek answers, seek truth,
but my voice got lost
in the noise.
I scream and nothing echoes,
I try to find me
Or
just sometimes let go,
the walls are too thick,
too hollow,
I swallowed all my words
red pills, old thrills
cold chills,
just to fit in,
but now I choke on them,
gagging on the truths
I never spoke,
eye shut but supposed to be woke
the joke.

The streets are paved in glass,
but no one dares to walk
bodies outlined in chalk
victims or victory
not
necessarily
a worn-out necessity,
Thoughts that hound the mind incisively,
Recklessly
too afraid to break,
too afraid to inhale,
too easy to fake,
too afraid to feel
the cuts that come with honesty.
But what is a life
What’s your deal, for real
if you don’t break yourself open?
What’s a soul
if it never bleeds?

I saw the demons
shape-shifting,
they walk in the daylight,
wearing masks made of smiles,
and delight,
morning to moonlight,
but they never fool me,
I can see
I know their names
I know their games.
They dance around,
They dance with flames
slick trickery in their veins
whispering promises of peace,
but all they bring is war,
what for?
Wars we can’t see
because we’ve been blinded
by the glitter and the gold,
sorry far too far from old.

I’ve been to hell,
and I’m still here
When your body and soul disappear,
crawling through the ashes,
gripping the last bit of hope,
a mind blinded by the dope,
Begging for the rope,
I don’t know what it means
to be saved,
but I know what it means
to survive,
dead in every moment,
I’m still breathing,
even if I’m barely alive,
I strive
To make it past yesterday
Living in tomorrow
Time lost then borrowed

The demons knock,
but I don’t answer.
I don’t need them anymore.
I’ve learned to build my own door
and this time,
I’ll keep it shut tight.

Because the silence
is louder than anything
they can throw at me.
And in that silence,
I’ll find my strength,
I'll find the me
learn and see,

Maybe I will see the light!

shattered
skin split wide,
ribs cracked open
under the heel of time,
bleeding ink, bleeding light,
bones humming verses,
but you
still breathing.
still fighting.
still rising.

have you ever seen
a mountain bend, a river fall
or a storm cry out in surrender?
no
you’ve never seen it,
and neither have I.

ruined, they call me.
lost, they say,
you’re nothing but dust, broken glass, wreckage
they do not know
I am fire.

I was made to burn
and this ash?
it remembers
the fire does not forget.

I’ve knelt, but never bowed
I’ve broken,
but never stayed shattered
no, not me.

I am the flood that swallows the earth,
the sky that splits wide open,
the dawn that still returns
after the darkest nights
wrap their fingers around my throat.

and you,
you too,
hide that flame behind your teeth,
clutch it in your chest,
press it down until it burns
hotter than any hell.
I know you.

I see the weight you carry,
the weight of years
spent in the shadow of fear,
drowning in the silence that cuts
like a razor’s edge.
but I see you
standing
still standing.

You’re not lost.
Not ruined.
Not broken.
You are still breathing, still fighting, still alive.

Rise
rise like the earth that breaks beneath you,
rise like the phoenix,
the storm that burns away the sky,
rise like every shattered piece
that once was you
but never will be again.

This world does not know you yet,
but it will
it will know the fire in your bones,
the thunder in your chest,
the way you burn everything in your path,
and still, still, you rise.

You. Rise.
Like the storm.
Like the flame.

to the darkest crevices we all escape from each day,
clawing out, forgetting, or pretending we do
but some never leave. some linger, ghosts curled
in the marrow of regret, faces melted in the echo
of a yesterday too slow, too weak, too nothing.
it was just a second, a breath, a misstep.
a hand not raised. a word unsaid. a smile swallowed.
and that was enough to cast them away,
stitched into shadows, never spoken aloud.

regret is for the living, for those who still wake
to the hush of streetlights trembling at dawn,
who still bite into the sinew of silence
and call it survival. but the forgotten—
they are not given the mercy of regret.
only the weight of a void carved in memory’s ribs,
only the nothingness that replaces a name,
a voice, a need, a gasp lost in the static
of the world’s unseeing, unhearing hum.

to be unseen is to die while breathing.
to reach and never touch is to burn without flame.
and so they are left there, bone-thin whispers,
entombed in dim-lit corridors of almost-love,
of almost-worth, of almost-enough.
no matter how hard the blind scream,
their voices dissolve like morning frost—
thin, fleeting, never enough to shatter
the glass of a world that never saw them.

but listen.

listen to the dark, to the echoes that pulse
like heartbeats beneath the cracks of time.
they are still there. still waiting. still asking
if not to be saved, then simply to be seen.