Auburn leaves descend,
Crimson peaks hold silent grief,
Loveless whispers Death.

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.

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.

I would give the winter's breath,
the shiver of frost on every pane,
to hold the weight of your laughter again,
to braid your name into the soft dusk.

I would give the moon,
its chalky whispers in the dark,
to hear your voice once more—
a ribbon of light cutting through my grief.

Oh, I would give my hands,
these tired, trembling hands,
if they could reach through the thin veil of silence,
if they could cradle your cheek,
brush your hair like I used to,
sing you to sleep again.

I would give the stars,
their distant promises, their cold fire,
just to say what I should have said every day:
I love you.
I miss you.
You were my sun, my endless summer.

But the world takes what it will,
and leaves only echoes.
So I sit here in the ruins of myself,
writing your name on the wind,
letting my love rise like smoke,
like a prayer you might still hear.

What I would give,
my darling,
is everything—
for just one more moment,
one more chance
to tell you
you were always enough.

empty staffroom hums,
tinsel draped in gaudy glee,
echoes fill the void.

Pills rattle on cue,
Cats purr in soft solace true.
Sofa hugs my frame,
Netflix whispers, sleep reclaims—
Healing slow, the hours accrue.

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.

1
He treats me frugally,
Stones weigh heavy in my dress—
Silent pockets sigh.

#2
Weight of pebbles rests,
Tongue holds silence, heavy truth,
View blooms slow but sure.

#3
Earth’s weight embraces,
Final breath yields to stillness,
Roots weave my return.

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.

Life in plastic folds,
Dreams wrapped tight in fleeting hope,
Trash cradles the soul.

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.

Lost in twisted ways,
Map holds secrets, silent taunts—
Man strikes lines with rage.
Paper torn, path now erased—
Victory in empty l(h)ands.

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.

Look into my eyes, a kaleidoscope of thoughts,
Fractured, refracting, endless.
So many choices, each a dagger’s tip,
Sharp, glinting in the shadow of paths untraveled.

They hurt the beast because they feared it—
A presence lingering like smoke in an empty room,
A whisper of what was always known.
The OD, quick and painless, invites us all,
A final door that clicks cleanly, slicing through the noise.

Why him, if you knew?
Knew the jeweled words would stab,
Their brilliance reflecting a hate that devoured.
Lonely strangers, relinquished and raw,
Digging holes with greedy hands,
Starving for connection, aching with regret.

She was different—
Too much, too close,
Her truth a mirror to the ghosts he denied.
She heard their whispers,
Too intense for his brittle comfort,
Her very being a revolting challenge.

Each second, a journey in shards.
She, finally accepted—by a psychopath—
No longer escaping the world’s biting sorrows.
Damaged children, raising damaged children,
Grasping for something whole,
Exploring the wounds like maps,
Each scar an unspoken truth.

His "I don’t love you anyway,"
A mourning, a death,
Memories strangled as he choked time from her lungs.
His cruel laugh, a vibration cutting through marrow.
But peace comes, soft and unstoppable,
A river of silent love,
Strong and masculine, like wild horses running untamed.

We don’t have a price.
Some define freedom in dreams; others in chains.
Yet the end waits for all—
Healing like a long exhale,
Forgiveness intimate, secret,
A kaleidoscope settled into stillness.

They run,
through streets that scream of bomb smoke and shattered bone,
their shadows swallowed by the black of hijabs,
a mother swaddles her babe, her heartbeat louder than the guns.

Blood whispers its story
on trembling hands—whose hands?
Hers, his, the boy too small to carry grief,
but already has it, pressed like a kiss on his brow.

How long?
How long before the dream of faces turns to ash?
Before names become nothing more than echoes
sung to the fleeing, like lullabies of loss?

The gun is no longer an object;
it is an extension of them, fused to flesh,
its weight the weight of survival,
its promise another lie whispered to the children.

They run,
but the streets do not let go.
The ruins hold their breath,
cradle them in decay,
and ask, "How much longer?"

The answer—
silent, like the graves they leave behind.

escape(wake)
by not-these-hands
(a metronome-of-thoughts)

facesglued //
to the(wall)all(talking)—at once;
witchesarguing  theirselvesbloodshattering
(not my fingers-on-the-trigger
but oh the bulletssscreamingmyname)

i cannot move
(is this asleep-or-awake?)
//paralyzed feet//(paralyzed hands)
&shewasonfireESCAPEwake—

the fields are a maze //crop-circle scars//
—journeysdark,deepsearching(purpose)—
shatter:
everything (silence
sCREAM)

escape–wake//escape—wake
butwhereisheaven?
wake.

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.

I am trapped in this gilt prison,
the bars gleaming like polished teeth,
pearls spooned into my mouth,
their luster turning sour against my tongue.
I wait, always, the watcher,
my hands folded in prayer or paralysis,
listening to the foreign murmurs of the dead—
crows with their black flags
of warning, wings slick with omen.

The mirrors blink,
candles flickering like failing hearts.
The grass outside shivers,
each blade whispering a secret escape
I cannot touch. A swan glides,
its neck an unbroken question,
its shadow darker than the water
it cuts open.

The door shuts with a hush
that feels like a burial.
Photographs click—ceremonies
of absence, memories that grin
like skulls. Death leans in,
a kind-faced thief offering rest.

There are two of us here—
me, and the other me,
bloated with hunger,
my fingers jammed into my throat,
my power swallowed whole.
We bridge this silence
with words brittle as bone,
oaths sworn to break,
the air shattered by the whine of a bullet
brushing skin.

Wells brim with sadness,
their depths haunted by the ghosts
of those who screamed and were silenced.
She thought he stood beside her—
a phantom lover with a tongue
barbed as wire, slicing her
into ribbons.

She dances, her arms a red spiral,
the hula hoop spinning tighter,
a circle of wounds closing
like a mouth around her body.
The swan watches,
its white wings gleaming with the stillness
of something that cannot save her.

It is in the smudge of mascara,
the red lip bleeding into the cracks
of a bitten mouth.
A quiet rebellion lives there.

Middle fingers do not shout;
they whisper—
a language only the tired
and the brave understand.

Running is not escape,
but a declaration.
A line of white powder,
a streak of neon—
these are maps
to the edge of something
sharp enough to cut.

They told us
fairy tales are for children.
But we grew up and learned
that happy marriages
are the most dangerous lies.

We sit behind screens,
armed with fake smiles,
perfect angles,
warriors of a war we don’t
believe in anymore.

The raves are loud,
but it’s the silence
of disappointment,
of insecure mornings,
of mirrors we cannot meet,
that tells the truth.

This is the war.
This is the smudge,
the smear,
the running.
And still,
we rise from the wreckage
like sparks in the dark,
too tired to shout,
too alive to stop.

We the nobodies, shadows cut from the cloth of smoke and scars,
a fever of sweat and darkness pooling, tears of sorrow swallowing tomorrow.
They locked us in silence, mad minds forging new words, wild and sharp,
each syllable slipping from sanity’s grip, each sound a breath clawing free.

Everything slides in time, the tick-tock mocking us, echoes like footsteps
down the hallway of closed doors, promises that never open.
See you on the other side, they said, where death waits like a lover,
the kiss of a fist, sweet baby girl, sleep—don’t listen,
we’ll wait before sharing the truth, its teeth bare and grinning.

The mania whispers in dark corners, shakes the bones from rest,
and a thousand thoughts slice through, a razor storm beneath quiet skin.
Blood seeping down thick thighs, warmth trickling like proof—
still alive, still fertile with fear, birthing only dread.

He could never hear her, she screamed into an endless void,
her voice a smear, red stains across cold walls.
And no peace wrapped her, no quiet settled in,
only the whisper of madness, and the promise—
of a darker dawn to come.

the world (a razor) hums with
laughter not mine—
crooked smiles cutting corners
of too-loud air (a trembling thing)

hands betray me (marionette strings)
dangling in this cracked parade
where faces blur into shadows
all teeth and no eyes—

and I (a statue) stuck to the cement
of this fear-wracked moment
watch with doe-eyes (wide and glass)
every step (a thunderclap)
a storm pounding the small sky within

sky breaks
and falls like shards,
my breath a shattered hymn
(please no) — tomorrow, I’ll stay
tucked in the soft (silent) cocoon of here.

no steps. no looks. no cruel
laughter to chase me into
the screaming world—

home, the only place
where walls hold me steady,
their silence a shield,
a quiet so deep
it forgets the world.