Everything bleached—
the words, the memory of words,
the tongue flattened beneath the weight
of what must not be spoken. A surrender
of sound, a silence that tastes like salt
pressed into a wound
you forgot to name.

Here—
the iodine threads through the dirt—
it burns its way backward,
into a childhood—
is it mine? I do not know—
that never grew
out of its scabs, that curled itself
into a tight fist
of unhealed skin.

The razors, though—
they moved like swifts, like
unseen birds
cutting through the air
too fast to stop—
their kisses, their strange
geometry of ruin.

And the grown-ups, their words—
or were they storms?
or the echo of gods?—
"You must obey, or vanish.
You must obey, or
learn to die of shame."
And so—
the body folds itself inward,
like paper, like
a breath no one will miss.

Do you feel it?
The guilt—
its slender fingers
tightening, as if around
the throat of a world.
The shame—its small
knife-point etching
names you did not choose
into the chest.
The way the chest carries it—
silent, but
with the weight of centuries.

"Tell the story," they said.
"Make it better.
Make it sing." But
their mouths are full
of echo, their threats
like waves breaking
against a cliff you can’t stop
dreaming of.

I want to write the dirt.
The cuts.
The razors in their perfect arcs.
I want to write the gods
that were not gods, the voices
that were not mine.
The grace—
noose-like, tightening—
but not the gilded lie
of endings.

Instead, a fire:
its single purpose,
its clear burning.
Not to erase, but to
scar. To carve me
out of this
bleached photograph, this
ghost-sky still
blistering my hands.

Let it end in the crackle of ash,
the body emerging—
not whole, but here,
a scarred brightness walking
into the unfinished dawn.

He eats at my soul with a lover's slow hand,

Each bite a hymn, each wound carefully planned.

His silence, a gospel, his shadow a prayer,

I light every candle, but he's always there.

A feast in the dark where no one can stand.

fat red berries cling,
snow breathes white upon their glow,
winter's quiet fire.

For it was not anger but sorrow—
At the Abandonment—laid bare—
The dandelion—blown to pieces—
Wishes scattered—everywhere.

She could hear their Thoughts—their Fears—
A chorus—soft—yet sharp—
She wished to hide inside herself—
A hollow—without a harp.

Self-medication’s quiet needle—
Addiction’s velvet glove—
She yearned for Home—but found illusion—
A mirage—far from Love.

She stared into the blank horizon—
Falling—farther still—
A call for asylum—ghostly scribes—
No cure for her ill will.

They stopped questioning the Overdose—
What happens—must occur—
We take precautions—but in the end—
The void—we will still endure.

He lied—his promises dissolving—
No Trust resides in Truth—
Sabotaged—her fragile Being—
An existence—gone uncouth.

The grace of a lone sparrow falters—
Circles—spiraling near—
Yet never reaching—centers hollow—

It begins with a whisper,
soft as feathers brushing bone,
a murmur threaded with sweet venom:
You’re too much, you know that?
He says it like love, like it’s kindness
to clip the wings he gave me.

I laugh,
because that’s what you do when
someone you trust steps on your shadow,
calling it a game.
I laugh,
because his smile holds me hostage,
because my silence has become
the price of his calm.

And then it grows,
the laughter sharpens into teeth.
Each word dressed in humor
but hiding the sting.
You’re insane.
He says it with his eyes locked on mine,
searching for the fracture.
You believe anything, don’t you? Idiot.
And the room becomes smaller
as the air folds itself into shame.

I once thought trust
was a ribbon we tied between us,
a thread unbroken.
But he pulls it taut
only to watch me stumble,
to laugh as it frays
beneath the weight of his lies.

I was naive—
yes, that’s true—
to think love was a place of safety,
to believe his words were mine to hold.
But now, his laughter
hangs heavy in the corners,
and I wonder:
when did the joke become me?

It isn’t love
when your softness becomes his sport,
when he laughs at the tender parts
and calls it play.
It isn’t love
to twist innocence into a punchline
and leave the room echoing
with your shame.

But still,
he grins like the sun,
and for a moment,
I almost believe
it’s all in my head.

Ready to shock unconscious—
a scream locked in my chest,
a storm swirling where love should have been.
Forsaken.
Forgotten.
Black wings fold tight against my eyes,
dragging me to the place
where breath turns to silence,
and hearts go to break.

If you had an inkling,
even the faintest whisper
that I existed,
why didn’t you look for me?
Why didn’t you fight the tide,
pull me from the hollow space
where I learned to disappear?

Why was I the one who searched,
who fought,
embarrassing myself
for your love?
I stood in the open,
raw,
bleeding,
hands stretched toward a ghost
that never turned back.

I wasn’t a black hole,
wasn’t an absence.
I was flesh,
I was blood,
I was here.

Maybe we could have danced in the light,
or I could have played tag
with your sons in the long grass.
But instead,
I became the shadow
you refused to see.

And now that it’s all been said and done,
the bitter truth cuts deeper—
it turns out
I’m the one who resembles you the most.

Half my life
I wandered,
seeking a name
that could fit into my chest.
Yours.
Mine.
Ours.

But you never came.
The silence stayed.
And black wings
are all that’s left to hold me.

plate spills over full,
crimson wine drowns the sorrow,
grief feasts silently.

Oh, if I could command the waves,

Bid them hush, their wild tongues stilled,

I would pave a tranquil path, a mirror of longing, for your return.

The weight of my truths
presses like stone—
no flood, no release,
only this grinding ache
against the sharp edge of language.

Each word is a wound reopened,
a splinter of myself
held to the light.
Silence is complicit,
it does not absolve,
only deepens the scar.

If my darkness stains you,
if the truth catches like barbed wire,
tear your gaze away—
this is not a plea for witness.
This is survival,
the slow unraveling
of a story that refuses erasure.

Do you doubt my suffering?
Do you doubt the sediment
of years pressed into me,
the residue of what I was?

What more can I give you
than this blood-inked offering,
this heartbeat fractured
between words,
pauses,
and the spaces you fail to see?

Let me remain unwhole—
not yet healed—
but forging the threads
that might someday
bind me to the surface
I cannot yet reach.

He gorges on my mistakes, a swollen moon,

pale and taut with the salt of my guilt.

Each night, he leans close, his breath like frost,

presses a kiss to my brow, cold as bone,

and whispers forgiveness I cannot believe.

sky’s tear softly falls,
cradled in the leaf’s embrace—
whispers of the dawn.

breath of quiet earth,
awakes in the morning light,
life stirs, tenderly.

I found a photo today—
its edges frayed,
its silence speaking louder than memory.
The ghost of her,
born of pain but draped in a soft, unknowing light.
How could she not see?
The naïve tilt of her mouth,
the unarmored gaze of someone
who believed in futures made of love.

I would step into that stillness if I could,
shake her shoulders,
tell her to run before the lies
knotted themselves around her ribs,
before his dagger—
not sharp, but slow,
pierced the center of her trust.

I would tell her to proclaim love
where it mattered,
to her daughter watching silently,
to the family she left in the shadows
for a man who swallowed the light.
Every day, her daughter saw it—
the slow dying,
a death stretched across years,
not swift but unrelenting,
like a clock with no hands to stop it.

Run, I’d say,
before the hollow gestures,
before the waiting
for a love that never belonged to you.
See through him,
his promises fragile as dried leaves,
his truths curving away like smoke.

But now I hold the photo,
and she is already gone,
a ghost I can only argue with
in the quiet of my mind,
a ghost who will never hear me.

You, boy,
A black sun in my sky,
Stomping through my soul,
Leaving craters where love once stood.

The ashtray’s a graveyard—
Cigarette corpses stacked high.
Whiskey whispers in mason jars,
Coffee cold as my heart.

Red lights, stop signs,
I’ve been stuck in this motionless grind,
Unhappy for years,
Dragged down by your weight.

Your heart, left at the door—
A cruel offering,
A beast hiding in your skin.
You sprung bitter tears like a broken fountain.
Time ticking, killing,
Till you become a man.

Will you shake me loose,
Like the spare change you never count?
Burn me out like yesterday’s Polaroid,
Edges curling, my face fading.

I’ll drink to tomorrow.
I’ll drink to forgetting.
But your shadow, boy,
Still lingers in the cracks of my mind.

I am the fire.
I am the scream.
And you?
You’re nothing but a dream dissolving in smoke.

She thought love would age like wine,
Smooth and dark, a holy sign.
Gentle whispers, velvet skies,
But the truth came wrapped in lies.

The shadows fell, they did not ask,
His voice a sermon, a shattering mask.
His absence carved, sharp and deep,
A wound that woke her in her sleep.

She drank the night to drown his face,
To forget the silence, to erase the space.
But the glass broke sharp against her hand,
And the blood sang truths she couldn’t stand.

Healing came like a thief in the rain,
Soft as ash, a balm for pain.
A knock at the door, a touch so kind,
An old friend’s voice she thought she'd left behind.

She stopped the drinking, stopped the fall,
Her laugh returned, a hymn in the hall.
Her wrinkles spoke of battles won,
Each line a prayer to the rising sun.

Now she writes by a candle’s glow,
Her words are rivers, strong and slow.
She meets her gaze in the looking glass,
A woman who rose from the broken past.

She lifts her glass to the evening light,
To the love she lost, to the endless fight.
Bold and unbreakable, she stands alone,
Aged like wine, her spirit her throne.

The air shimmered, alive with its own trembling pulse,
and I felt—yes, I felt—the veil tear, thin as gossamer,
wet with dew and dreams.
The mushrooms, small and unassuming, lay in my palm
like a secret too heavy for words.
I ate them,
and the world unfolded,
petal by petal,
a flower blooming backward into itself.

It was not the self I sought—
not at first.
No, it was the taste,
the salt of knowing that clung to my tongue,
sharp and metallic,
like the tang of stars fallen into the sea.
The ground, steady and loyal all my life,
buckled and sighed,
and I slipped,
I drowned—
oh, willingly I drowned!—
into the land of fevered dreams,
where shadows wear faces
and light bends to its own whims.

The Self—what is it but a vapor,
a mist rolling out to sea,
always receding,
always somewhere else?
I reached for it—
a hand outstretched, trembling,
fingers brushing its edge—
but it dissolved,
scattering into the sky,
a thousand tiny stars.
"Come," said the stars,
each one a voice,
each one a wound.

Time folded in on itself,
its moments dripping like candle wax,
melting, melting—
and there was Truth,
naked as a child,
unflinching.
She beckoned,
her eyes sharp as glass,
her mouth full of salt.
"Do you dare?" she asked.
"Do you dare taste what cannot be untasted?"

And I—oh, I—
drank her down,
her bitterness, her fire,
until my tongue burned with her name.
What was the Self then,
but a shadow cast by flame?
A ghost dancing in the ash of knowing?

Still, I search.
Still, I wander beneath the sky,
its stars like open wounds,
its silence like a hymn.
And when I find myself—if I find myself—
will I recognize the face?
Or will I merely see
the salt-streaked reflection
of the sea I once drowned in?

he presses (deliberate) each button,
soft as a whisper, sharp as a pin,
a smile that cuts, (the blade of him)
& she, unravels / unspools /
into noise.

you always, he says.
you never, he sighs.
his words,
a clever parade,
a firework bloom
of gaslighted skies.

her patience,
a thread—pulled taut, then frayed,
then gone.
and when she speaks (oh, the daring of it),
he shapes her syllables into storms,
ties her anger to the wind—
“see how you are?”
he grins.

she becomes the thunder (his storm, his proof).
her breath, a chaos of no escape,
her voice,
a house he burned down
but still blames
her for the flame.

until she folds her wings
into the cage he built—
silent. quiet. small.
not for lack of fight
but for lack of air.

and still,
his lies bloom sharp (oh, his garden of blame).
his hands, gentle knives,
carve her into someone she doesn’t know.
& he names her crazy,
wraps her in words like straightjackets
until she forgets
her name.

but even now,
her silence waits,
a seed beneath the ash.
her roots will remember—
one day,
she will grow back.

Let vanity slip away like smoke in the wind,
And lies crumble beneath the weight of truth.
Let doubt loosen its grip on your soul,
And gossip fall quiet in the stillness of love.
No false friends, no hollow words—
It is time to show them who you are.

colors spill softly,

rainbow bridge greets the still sky,

light bends into peace.

Your hands rise,
lifting me like the sun lifts the sea,
like roots pressing upward
through the weight of the earth.

Soft, yet forged in fire,
they carry the echoes of old wars,
eyewitnesses to the quiet battles
fought behind closed doors,
where love and labor
bleed into one another.

These hands have sewn the sky together,
stitched the open wound of hunger,
performed CPR on broken dreams,
forcing life breath to breath
into what the world tried to abandon.

They have held me when I was
spiraling out of control,
when the weight of existence
pressed into my chest
like an ocean refusing to let go.

I have seen them whisper over water,
stirring secrets into steam,
curiosity flickering in their fingertips
as they trace the edges of another day.
Unforgettable memories live in their creases—
the hush of a mother brushing fevered skin,
the press of fingers that say,
I am here. You will not fall.

Oh, hands of women, hands of warriors,
who write history into my skin,
who lift me, who hold me,
who do not ask for thanks—
only the courage to go on.