He was more than a granddad to me. He was a father, a god—a complex, towering figure of contradictions, both tender and tyrannical. For us children, but especially for me, he always had an endless well of patience. Even though he was cruel, I craved his love and attention like sunlight. Today is his birthday. Though he's passed on to some other corner of the universe, I believe we'll meet again someday.

I remember Boxing Day, his birthday, when the family would gather with all their arguments in tow. The day felt like an extension of Christmas but held its own distinct magic. We would set the table together, sometimes cooking, though often simply reheating the leftovers from the day before. It was chaotic, noisy, and unforgettable. Amidst the tumult, there was his steady presence, his pride in orchestrating it all.

He loved to see the children a little tipsy, and it was under his watchful, proud gaze that I had my first sip of alcohol. That memory stays with me—the warmth of the drink, the warmth of his approval. There would always be arguments, loud and raw, but they seemed to be part of the ritual, almost expected, as though his home couldn't contain so many clashing lives without them.

At the end of the night, he’d quiet the room and hand out white envelopes filled with money to all the children. He’d say, “This will be my last year. Next time I won’t be with you.” We laughed it off year after year, not believing him until, bittersweetly, it finally was true. The last Boxing Day without him was empty, a void none of us could fill.

I remember the other parts of him too—the early mornings steeped in black coffee and tobacco smoke, his smart clothing paired incongruously with bare feet. The room of chattering birds where I tried, and failed, to save baby chicks fallen from their nests. The way he shared his thoughts with me, thoughts too heavy for most ears, his doubts and even his regrets. How he once admitted, without flinching, brutal honesty only he could deliver.

He was cruel, especially to women, but never to me until the end when he insisted I had grown fat. With me, he was different, softer. He made me feel safe and protected, even when his anger made others shrink away. He was always fixing things—clocks, kettles, whatever was broken—and growing herbs and flowers with a care that seemed almost out of place in his hands. Those same hands, gentle in one moment, could be brutal in the next, quick to strike my grandmother or anyone who crossed him.

And yet, I more than respect him. I miss him. He was a role model, flawed and difficult, but mine. When I came to him homeless with my own child in my arms, he didn’t hesitate to take us in. He gave me a place where I could rest, where I could breathe.

His life was a mess of contradictions—love and anger, gentleness and violence, pride and regret. But he was my granddad, my father, my god. And I loved him for all of it.

The branches lattice beneath her, black veins
etching the earth's sallow skin. She lies
as if pinned, a moth, the ground
opening its throat to devour her whole.

The trees, thin-limbed and aching, lean in,
their shadows like fingerprints
on her bare thighs. He is above her,
a dark weight, his breath thick
as the stench of iron. Crooked teeth
graze her tender insides, his mouth
a cavern of rot. Her chipped nails catch
on his skin, splintering her last defense—
each struggle a hymn he hums through his teeth.

The bass thumps in the distance,
a pulse too far to save her. His rhythm
is sharper, faster, a saw grinding
through the fragile architecture
of her. Her pelvis cracks beneath
his thrusts, her fragility undone,
his pleasure oozing into her wounds.

Before this—before him—there was the Dragon.
Silver foil unfolded like a revelation,
blue smoke crawling through her lungs,
its touch an anesthetic hymn. She exhaled
herself into nothingness, a slip of a girl,
a husk, unseeing. Vulnerability etched itself
into her marrow. The trees,
silent anatomists, catalogued her surrender.

Now, she is a secret the earth consumes,
her body a whisper the soil licks clean.
The trees will remember the taste of her,
their roots tangled in her hair, their leaves
swaying with the rhythm of her fall.
No one else will know—
only the trees, their mouths sealed with bark,
their witness as still and eternal as stone.

If you'd say

s
o
r
r
y,

I’d forgive all that you’ve done—

                                   Even this shadow,

The hollow shell you shaped me,

                                   Yearning still for your soft voice.

Chop, chop, chop. The marionette slumps, and I’m left holding the blade, sticky with the residue of years. Family? A loose construct. A rotting scaffolding propped up by shared scars and the thinnest thread of blood. They weren’t people—they were collectors. Hoarders of anger, archivists of hurt. They fed on it, bled for it, distilled it into a toxin they called love. I drank it until my veins swelled, until the comatose hum was the only sound I knew.

Their lies were iron bars, their truths blunt objects. They didn’t whisper—they shouted, fists slamming bets on the underdog. "He’ll crack," they said, "too small, too soft." They didn’t count on the dog biting back, didn’t see the will buried beneath the scars.

And the scars—purple, thick, obscene. Skin turned leather under fire. A graft job, patched together with pain and necessity. They thought they’d burned me to ash, but ash has its uses. It fertilizes. It grows things.

Now I’m moving forward, past their circus of anger and blood, past the puppeteer’s stage. The road hums under me, neon signs flashing promises that aren’t real, but maybe they don’t have to be. The truth? There isn’t one. Just will. Just the drive toward some distant point of light. Peace isn’t handed out. You take it. You keep it. And maybe, just maybe, it keeps you too.

I am the shell of a cathedral,
my ribs stripped bare,
dust grinds against my marrow.
Smoke coils, ghost-thin,
a lover's last exhalation,
its fingers press against
the hollows of my throat.

Stained glass eyes—
shattered saints, shattered demons.
Their colors bleed across my skin,
an abstract of wars long silenced,
their screams etched in my spine.
I house their echoes
like a mausoleum,
their whispers scraping my eardrums.

The earth betrayed me once—
a trembling, violent lover.
Its hands split me open,
toppled my crown.
Now I wear my wounds like jewels,
a monument to collapse.

Sleep eludes me.
What lullaby holds the dead?
Their songs thread the air,
soft as ash, sharp as shards.
I lie beneath their melody,
each note a needle in my sternum.

And yet, I do not crumble.
Something fierce and hollow in me
clings to this ruin—
a hymn for no one,
a prayer to nothing.

We inherit it,
the pain—handed down like a family curse,
wrapped in silence,
placed in our laps without instruction.
You sit at the table,
mouth full of bitterness,
and they call it strength,
the way you chew and swallow.
But what if it’s not?
What if it’s a trick—
the wizard behind the curtain,
the demon in the machine,
smiling as we feed
it something we never agreed to give?

I don’t want to live this way,
a specimen pinned beneath glass,
but maybe we are experiments—
flesh and bone trials of endurance,
while the saints walk among us
with their straight spines
and sparkling teeth,
their hair soft as untouched sin.

They hide their hunger well.
The lust stays pressed beneath their skin,
simmering in the quiet places.
But us—
we wear it raw,
this separation between grace and grit,
our hands calloused from holding too much.

If I could save you,
I would.
I’d press my lips to your wounds,
turn salt tears into something sweet,
lick the pain away like sugar,
dig a hole in the sky
for us to hide in—a pocket of forever.

I could love you like that:
diamond-bright,
shattered and whole all at once,
each edge catching the light,
each facet its own language of care.

But this story—this terrible, beautiful story—
it keeps pulling us forward,
through the mud and the starlight.
Some days we’re saints.
Some days we’re demons.
Most days, we’re just trying to hold
what lies in between.

We could wear disguises,
play pinball with our choices,
watch them ricochet off the walls of who we are,
ringing out in bursts of chaos,
neon lights illuminating the mess,
until the machine tilts—
or we do.
Maybe that’s the trick:
to laugh as we play,
to let the disguise slip now and then,
and call it living.

My Muse arises from his infinite sleep,
A whisper in the chasm where shadows creep.
In dream, I wander, blind and bare,
A child of silence, feeling air.

The trees, skeletal, shake their spines,
Releasing relics from hidden shrines—
Trinkets, tokens, sins of old,
Each frozen now in hues so cold.

Scarred and brittle, the silhouette breaks,
Bones through black, the body aches.
Yet dew, soft balm, on wounds does fall,
A salve for the soul—if anything at all.

His kiss is death; his promise, surrender,
A union cruel, both dark and tender.
But light unmasks what shadows veil;
The birdcage opens; the spirit sails.

The seed, though scattered, may still take root,
A fragile hope in a world of soot.
The strings now wail, the hymn is done,
A mother’s lullaby beneath the sun.

The mirror water, smooth and wide,
Reflects the soul I’ve set aside.
My hair, like tendrils, floats and trails;
The ripples grow, the weight unveils.

Pure, at last, the guilt does fade,
A shadow now where sorrow stayed.
Depression lingers—a faithful shade,
Guardian of all the vows unmade.

Don’t look back—his eyes are mine,
Vacant, lost, a shared design.
The ****** weeps her crimson thread,
A river carved through the still, the dead.

Smoke ascends where wars still rage,
A fog that blurs the infant page.
Unborn eyes accuse, demand,
Yet ghosts remain with stilled, grave hands.

I seek, I bleed, disciple torn,
Haunted by truths both sharp and worn.
The quiet watches, soft and grim;
No judgment passed, no prayer, no hymn.

Your tongue,
a blade that remembers
where I am softest,
where the scar tissue is thinnest.
You wield it without hesitation.

You ask for acceptance
as if I owe it
to the thing that has hollowed me out,
made me flinch at shadows,
left me raw and singing
with wounds I did not choose.

Sorrow has blackened the horizon.
The future—
a thing I used to believe in—
is now a quiet ache
that hums under my skin.

I flinch at your sarcasm.
It’s a whip,
a steady rhythm of harm
I cannot outrun.

And the problem you refuse to see—
it is breathing.
It is alive.
It soars above me like a black kite,
leaving me marked in ways
I can never explain.

I search for home
as though it’s a place that exists,
a place that will hold me
without splintering.

But you—
you crown yourself in their love
while their laughter
cuts you from behind.
Every sacrifice I make
is a ghost.

You hand them my offerings,
giving them weight they do not deserve.
And here I stand,
naked of hope,
bare of safety,
still whispering your name
like a prayer
to a god who doesn’t answer.

She held a conversation with the cracks in the ceiling,
called them sisters, called them home.
They answered back in whispers
of storms she never asked for.
A thousand tiny earthquakes
under her paper-thin skin.

Her hands were maps to nowhere,
veins like rivers running dry.
She carried every "I'm fine"
like a brick in her chest,
a cathedral of lies built from silence
and the prayers no one heard.

She danced on shards of herself—
sharp edges, aching heels,
the broken girl waltzing with the ghost
of who she used to be.
Each step a soundless scream,
each cut a hymn to the hollow.

And when she shattered,
it wasn’t like the movies—
no slow motion, no violins,
just the raw crack of a soul
splitting open,
a kaleidoscope of pain
spilling into the dark.

The wind gathered her pieces,
spinning them into stars,
while the moon wept softly
for the girl who gave her light
away.

you (lit) a fire
inside my bones – soft (slow)
hands taught flame to breathe (to
grow) until
you ****** it dead

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

Sirens call.
They call you home.

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

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

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

Where were you then?

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

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

No, no—
Nowhere to run.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beneath my ribs, a songbird sleeps,

Whispering truths no one dares to keep.

I thread my wounds through silken lies,

Broken glass beneath soft lullabies.

He moves like shadow, so close, so far,

Reaching for a light that isn’t where we are.

I hush my heart – let it break, let it bleed, unseen.

I’ve seen the future,

it looks a lot like this.

Your eyes, full of old fights

we never had, but should have.

We carry on, hands full of silence.

Open your eyes to see beyond the past,
Time, a reel unwound, looping too fast.
Enter future dreams lush with tears,
A kaleidoscope of fears and forgotten years.

The cigarette falls from her shaking fingers,
Ashes trace whispers where memory lingers.
Time, a distraction, but isn’t it all?
Strangers and entourage drift through the hall.

She was once a distraction—
A neon sign, a feverish attraction.
Now she’s a diagnosis,
A manic-depressive prognosis.

Regrets for the war within her rage,
Her soul, a novel with torn-out pages.
And yet, from silence, words flow clear,
Like ghosts dictating stories she can't bear.

Who are the strangers in this tableau?
Her reflection in fragments she’ll never know.
Time’s cruel arrow bends to her despair,
A loop of smoke curling in air.

Open your eyes, the past refrains,
Its endless echoes clatter in chains.
Yet futures gleam with dreams profane—
She writes them in ashes, again and again.

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

The same corner bends beneath us.

The ground gives, then takes,

like it knows we will fall again.

We call it learning,

but the sky calls it forgetting.

I'll burn the whole world down,
drinking shot after shot,
a line of ******* tracing
the fault lines of my ruin.
She whispered his name—
it slid like silk through the cracks,
a prayer I should not answer,
a hymn to something broken.

Her partner, cold as winter steel,
turned away with hands clenched,
fists full of silence,
but I saw her,
wild and animalistic,
a creature of the night.
Her fragile wings folded
against my aching eyes,
her shadow heavy
like a sin I craved to confess.

She was sunlight
rising from the deep blues of the ocean,
vast and wide,
always hungry,
her voice a melody
in languages my soul knew by heart.
She spoke,
and every tongue became one,
every word a wound
that bled longing.

She misses her mother—
that ghost of neglect,
that monument to pain.
Her tragedy, buried deep,
roots twisting around the ruins
of love she'd never known.

And me,
a weary traveler
with no map for her labyrinth,
I found her like a storm
finds a broken shore.
She burned her trust—
ashes of what could never be—
but still,
I lit my match.

in the womb's quiet,
tiny limbs seek open space,
cord loops like a snare.

breathless, he tumbles,
head held high where it should bow,
life's thread pulls too tight.

silent prayers rise,
hands reach to untangle fate,
hope clings to the light.

He said we were like a supernova,
the sudden explosion, white-hot
and loud in the body of the sky,
the kind of light that burns
through the eyelids,
leaves an afterimage etched
in the retina of the universe.
Seen for three days straight,
sunlight and starlight fused
into one unbearable glare.

He told me love is the reset button,
the way a star collapses to begin again.
He said, I could survive alone,
but chose me instead, as if survival
were not the easiest answer,
as if being with me were a decision
made in a moment of stillness.

I doubted him—
his quiet strength, the way
he could carry the weight of silence
as if it weighed nothing,
the way he didn’t sway
when the winds rose,
when I unraveled, my edges
fraying into the thin air.

I need him to hold the center,
to keep the world from tilting,
but he doesn’t need like I do.
He lives in wants stripped clean—
no hunger, only fullness,
no chaos, just the brushstroke
of a steady hand.

And me—
I am the opposite of steady.
I am a gust,
a whip of color staining the canvas,
a metamorphosis that never lands,
forever on the verge of becoming
but never quite there,
a creature of motion, a hunger
that doesn’t know where to rest.

Still, he stays,
his calm like a gravity
that pulls me into orbit.

The supernova burns out.
The light goes dark.
I want to ask him,
What happens after?
But he looks at me—
the way he always does—
as if the question isn’t necessary,
as if we were already
the answer.

Mother sighed in a cradle of haze,
stitched my name in smoke, in a fugue of days.
Born to the rhythm of a wheel's refrain—
just the road, just the road, just the hollow refrain.

Father sang to the glass with his weathered hands,
a hymn to forgetting, a preacher’s last stand.
The spaces he left were louder than words,
just the ghost of him, just the absence heard.

There’s a cigarette choir in the shadow’s fist,
amber prayers that fade in a whispered twist.
The whiskey’s a prophet with a venomous tongue,
and I am his echo—forever unsung.

Love was a thief with a mercenary smile,
she held my heart like a stone on trial.
She kissed me once, then left me bare,
now I breathe in the silence, just the air, just the air.

Mother, you carved me a crown of lead,
a burden unseen, a song unsaid.
I roll through the veils of a world undone,
searching for stillness beneath the sun.

The stars, they flicker like bruises in bloom,
each one a wound, each one a room.
I sing to myself—I am the sky's refrain,
rolling alone through the ache, through the flame.

I cannot do this anymore—
this labor of unraveling myself
only to be misnamed, misunderstood.
I was linked to him, yes—
a tether fraying in the dark,
his absence a wound,
his indifference a quiet violence.
What was I, if not the ghost
he left behind to haunt the living?

The side effects are sharp-edged,
a prescription for forgetting
that forgets nothing.
This is not healing.
This is not cure.
Take me back to the before-time,
to when you cared enough
to name my anguish aloud,
to call it what it was.
Now, I am the sum of your silence,
a woman folded into herself,
trapped in the space
between betrayal and breath.

But still, I stand—
because someone must.
I forgive myself
for believing in your promises,
for letting you map my body
as a battlefield,
for holding your hands
even as they burned.

Darling, don’t go—
but don’t stay.
Disappear so completely
that your memory loses its teeth.
Leave me to the emptiness,
to the choices stolen by your indifference.

My guardian angel comes not with wings
but with hands—
earth-stained and firm,
building me back, bone by bone.
They know the language of endurance,
how to feed hope to the starving,
how to offer a second chance
without demand.

Here is the truth:
I am no longer yours to define.
Here is the reckoning:
I reclaim my name,
write it on the earth with every step,
become a body of love
that bends but does not break.