Tumbling down the jagged scream of rocks,
the star on his chest buried under the rubble of decades,
shattered constellations scatter like ash over asphalt—
who's left to testify to the night’s betrayal?
Fair and faithful are words for the dead,
roadkill philosophies smeared across highways of hunger,
dreamers flattened under the wheels of endless inquiry—
truth a bent nail in the coffin of questions,
Morse code flickers from insomnia’s windows,
each blink a lifeline—each pause a funeral.

I’ve seen you hiding, all of you,
hands trembling behind curtains, eyes darting like shadows,
your lips whispering confessions to ghosts.
Who are you running from?
Who waits at the end of your tethered silence?

Secrets grow like vines in the throat of the city,
tangling the breath of poets, prophets, and junkies.
Not sleeping, not dreaming, not blinking,
we shuffle through cracked streets,
faces blurred like old Polaroids burned by time’s indifference.

Forever waiting, forever watching—
reality unfolds not as a revelation but as a wound,
spilling truths we don’t want to see,
smearing light across the dark canvas of our fears.

Listen to the static hum of the night,
to the machines breathing for us when we can not.
There’s no answer in the Morse code,
only the pulse of absence,
only the signal of a world unraveling itself,
one starlit fragment at a time.

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.

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.

The walls breathe in static—
a hum, a crackle, a whisper of wires
pulling tight around my throat.
Every sound a gunshot.
Every shadow a knife.
The milk spills,
a galaxy spreading across the floor,
an apocalypse in white.

Outside, the neon world churns,
spitting teeth, shrapnel dreams.
Everything slick, wet, sharp.
The streets groan,
their intestines spilling out
in the form of cracked asphalt and broken glass.
I can’t leave;
I won’t.

Inside, the air thickens,
a syrup of dread.
Home is a box,
four corners dripping in soft rot.
I sleep under the table
because the bed is too open,
the ceiling too close.

An old television flickers in the corner—
faces in grayscale,
lips moving with no sound.
I try to pull their words apart,
but they squirm like worms.

Every second fractures,
splitting into shards.
Each shard digs in deep—
a hiccup, a phone ringing,
a window slammed shut
by the hands of ghosts.

I try to glue myself together
with the thought of silence.
But silence is a gun too,
a loaded chamber waiting to click.

The wolves circle out there—
dressed as mailmen, as friends,
as my own reflection.
I clutch the blanket,
a shroud, a shield,
a joke.

Safe.
Safe?
Safety is a story they sell in pills,
in pamphlets, in soft voices
that drip honey and venom.
But the wolves are here.
The wolves are me.
The wolves are you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Barefoot children sleep,
Forest bloom hide's dark desire~
Noose of **** and tears.

Flapping hands, loud moans,
Echoed phrases, tantrum storms,
Three months—burnout grows.

River streams whisper,
Unconscious dreams cascading,
Infertile, fall fades.

Silent ruins stand,
Ghosts of a lost world whisper,
Dust cloaks barren dreams.

Empty plates stacked high,
Lonely hearts in wrappings torn,
Love fades with the waste.

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

Rushing steps halt cold,
Crimson glare demands patience—
Time drips through still air.

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

during my cigarette break
i met a perfect stranger
(his hands smelled of bleach,
mine manicured and adorned)
he a cleaner
i a teacher's assistant

we spilled words like loose coins,
quickly, easily
about pasts
that refused to stay buried.
how mental illness
gnawed quietly at the edges
of our days,
how Christmas was
a fistful of broken promises,
how parents became
ghosts of voices
we no longer called.

we confessed
to the solitude of crying
when the walls were thick enough
to keep secrets,
and i saw in his eyes
something frighteningly familiar—
the weight
of almost,
of never quite enough.

him a cleaner,
i a teacher's assistant,
yet between us,
no distance,
only the soft unraveling of
what it means to be human.

I shook his hand
with utmost respect,
the kind reserved for warriors
who fight wars no one sees,
and I asked for his name—
(it hung in the air
like a fragile bird).

he told me softly,
as if ashamed of his own syllables,
as if names could erase
the years of invisible labor
or the silent rooms
he scrubbed clean of other people’s messes.

and in that moment,
he was no stranger,
no cleaner, no shadow—
just a man
whose story brushed against mine,
soft as shared breath,
sharp as shared pain.

when I walked away,
the smoke of my cigarette
curled into his absence,
and I wondered
how many lives
we pass without touching,
how many names
we never think to ask.

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 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.

She sees herself slipping sideways, crawling out of frame—a fractured shadow laughing bitterly at the void. Split into two, three, a dozen hungry ghosts armed to the teeth, blades humming, flashing like neon sickness under a rotting sun. A chemical tang on the tongue—morphine dreams, sharp as razors, as bitter as the lies she whispers to herself, again and again and again. Agreement? No chance. Agreement's a dead language.

The streets are jagged veins, carved by desperate hours and desperate hands. The past crashes through like a ****** in withdrawal, clawing at her skin, digging for some fragile vein of meaning. The chosen ones scatter like cigarette ash into the unbreathable air. Truth burns. Doubt screams. Nobody wins this game.

She’s disgraced, sure, but truth is her leash. She’s got the numbers—counts the dead, calculates the weight of significance in a world slipping off its axis. Oracle burned to ash by her own prophecy, she's got secrets to sell. Whispers futures into the ears of corpses. Hands groping through the static for some code, some cipher. Eyes wide, empty. Blind.

The labyrinth pulls her deeper, silken threads unraveling into something monstrous, writhing roots, tangles of anxiety choking the air. Confess! she commands, spitting venom. Purity’s a joke told by the ******, a punchline you find only when the blade's in your hand. But she’s reaching anyway, clawing at enlightenment like it owes her something, like despair’s got an answer hiding in the filth. Flowers bloom red in the cracks, ecstasy spilling like blood, too much, too fast, choking.

Blood pools where the flow stops. Stagnant. She swallows herself, folds into nothing. The mirror devours her whole, spitting back echoes, endless recursion, hysteria blooming in the cracks. Scream trapped, caught, reflected infinitely. A Möbius strip of despair, looping forever, cutting deep, deeper still.

No exit. Just mirrors. Just screams.

i see the  
   shadows  
   dancing—  
    a kaleidoscope of  
  memories (whispers  
   of laughter and  
   tears)  
   flickering like  
   dying stars  

death, with a  
   smile,  
   (hades’ embrace)  
   wraps her in  
   velvet darkness  
   where time  
   bends and  
   breaks  

photographs  
   strewn like fallen  
   petals,  
   each moment  
   a ghost that  
   clings (to  
   the edges of  
   her fading light)  

overdose—  
   a tempest in  
   her veins;  
   the world  
   dissolves,  
   (a soft sigh)  
   she slips  
   into the  
   arms of night  

and i,  
   a witness,  
   hold my breath,  
   caught in the  
   web of  
   her  
   leaving.

in the dim light of  
           our laughter  
we unravel  
   the tangled threads of sorrow  
               (whiskey drips like rain)  

your eyes hold  
   the universe’s  
             softest secrets,  
while smoke curls like  
        whispered dreams  
   slipping through fingers  

we have work to do  
            (trust is a fragile bird)  
   listening to the echoes  
of what was and what might be,  
               grieving in the  
              spaces between words  

as dawn stretches its arms,  
   we rise from the ashes,  
   two wild hearts  
    (beating in unison)  
   reborn in the light of a  
                brand-new day.

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.

In the hush of your lingering,  
I hear whispers—  
lost things,  
unvoiced sighs,  
a heartbeat (soft),  
echoing the  
darkness.

You were a flicker,  
a flame  
in my cold night,  
a ghostly joy  
wrapped in  
tragedy,  
and I thought—  
I’d lost you,  
hopelessly  
drowning in  
memories,  
always.

Lie to me,  
as I (morph)  
into shadows;  
tell me I’m fine,  
even as I unravel,  
because we are  
two souls,  
caught  
in this storm.

Strangers,  
falling in love,  
lost in c h a o s—  
every touch  
a spark,  
every glance  
a promise,  
written in the  
stars (above).

I’ll save you,  
even if it means  
sacrificing t r u t h,  
clutching at the fragile  
beauty of  
our delusion.

So let us dance  
in the ruins,  
the world crumbling  
around us,  
embracing echoes  
of tangled desires,  
until the night swallows  
us whole & we find  
solace in the  
darkness we’ve  
created.

Lie to me as we overdose on love,  
lie to me as I disassociate  
and give birth to another me—  
a reflection,  
a shadow,  
lost in the echoes  
of what we could be,  
a heartbeat (soft)  
in the silence,  
forever entwined.

Confession unfolds,
Wild child sheds lost innocence,
Time locks guilt away.

Jealous seas whisper,
Filthy mouth hides love’s regret,
Calmness fades to gray.

Pills drift through the waves,
Melancholy grips the heart—
Hope sinks with the tide.

A pearl moon circles,
Koi fish ripple silent dreams,
Water whispers low,
Circling hopes, a dream to hold.