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

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.

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.

Bouquet of regret,
Petals wilt with each footstep,
Vows fade in the breeze.

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.

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.

Through fire's wrath and earth's embrace,
He fell to ash, lost from his place.
The rain, a song of sky's lament,
Woke what the flames to darkness sent.

The witch, her hands like ancient trees,
Whispered life on the shifting breeze.
Her words wove through the soot and loam,
To call him back, to bring him home.

The ash dissolved, the earth gave way,
And from the mud, his flesh did sway.
Rain kissed his form, his body whole,
A vessel new, but the same old soul.

He walked through streets where silence lay,
Past mourners steeped in yesterday.
Eyes wide with shock, their grief undone,
For the dead had risen, returned as one.

He reached the house of shadowed pain,
Where she had wept through endless rain.
Her milky eyes could never see,
But grief had shaped her destiny.

Her soul, she’d sold for just one chance,
To feel his touch, his fire, his dance.
He pressed his fingers to her lips,
A ghost, alive, in love's eclipse.

She felt his hunger, wild, unbound,
A rhythm fierce, a primal sound.
The world fell still as they entwined,
Her blindness pierced by love's design.

For one last time, their spirits burned,
A fleeting gift for what she yearned.
A witch's bargain, brief and cruel,
The fire of love, a timeless fuel.

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 soft lullabies for this rage,
no bedtime tales for the scars.
Her rebellion, a waltz in combat boots,
spiked with grunge, venom, and a scream
that split the dawn like broken glass.
No lowering of voices—
it was them who whispered ******
while she carried the weight of silence,
their pills clutched in cold fists.

Madness was no surrender,
no white flag to psychiatrists
and their bottled truths.
She danced instead,
barefoot with demons that knew her name,
their laughter a dirge,
their touch as real as chains.

Words slithered into mirages—
truth, lies, all indistinct,
a love once pure now shadowed,
a muse now bound by sleepless nights
and post-traumatic hymns.
Our Lady of Sorrows bled for a flock
that prayed in her shadow,
kneeling in borrowed guilt.
But when she bled,
no one looked.

Plans drawn in whispered ink—
a razor’s edge,
a promise of release.
Love, a phantom now,
its face distorted with time,
matured, stretched thin by distance.
The scream of silence grew louder,
and demons conversed until the sun rose,
its light bruising the horizon.

She was no saint.
She forgave no trespasses.
But as the dawn burned anew,
there lingered a pulse,
a faint rhythm of hope—
love not redeemed,
but waiting,
coiled like a spring
for the next dance.

The bark and branches rise, trembling, from the ancient ground, their yearning fingers stretching to the bruised heavens, blotting out the weary sun. Beneath their shadow, hope folds into itself like a wounded bird. She lies awake, an open wound on the earth, listening to the harsh caw of birds that circle like the minutes of a clock unwinding.

Time, that reckless dancer, pirouettes endlessly. A needle pierces her fragile vein, delivering the brown flood of escape. Her heart races, wild as a streetlight flickering before the abyss claims her. She teeters on the edge, cradled in the brittle arms of a tomorrow that does not come. He is there, her architect of ruin, climbing his fragile pedestal, his power sharp and cruel as glass. She drowns, not in love but in his violence, his lies weaving a cocoon of despair around her.

Memories shimmer, reflections of a girl she once was. A child, laughing in sunlight, her hair a river of gold. They cry out to her, those ghosts of innocence, shaking her awake in the labyrinth of his cruelty. Can you hear me? they scream, their voices slicing through the haze. But he, the tyrant of her heart, paints her as a madwoman. He slashes through the canvas of their shared life, each photograph a crime, each moment erased.

The butchers block gleams, her swan neck poised, but still she endures. Her breath, a whispered defiance, rises like dawn over the wreckage of her days. And somewhere within her, a flicker of hope remains—a pearl in the mud, untarnished by his darkness.

She will smile again. Her life, though battered, is a treasure. And the branches will part, the sky will clear, and her song will rise, soft and unbroken, to the stars.

sometimes,
I think,
that maybe,
perhaps,
I should be wrapped in bubble wrap,
a makeshift armor
for the jagged world.

because I am fragile—
like aged porcelain dolls,
cracked eyes
tainted lips,
staring blankly at truths
they'll never tell.

we sat in circles,
confessing sins
or inventing them,
clinging to the lie of purpose.
she breathed in the dust,
the light of the cheap bulb,
while the burning liquor
erased us,
dare by dare.

alive until morning—
skin against skin,
clothes torn away,
as if the nakedness
could make us real.

but there was no beauty,
just the sound of breaths,
and the pooling remains
of something
we once thought...but no longer
was love.

The dove lies split open, roadkill on black tar,

its white purity bleeding into the dark,

war has begun where peace once perched,

feathers soaked in oil, the asphalt’s cold hunger,

we name this wreckage progress, and drive on.

The room was dim, lit only by the haze of a street lamp filtering through half-drawn blinds, scattering lines like prison bars across the detritus of her life: unopened bills, cracked coffee mugs, and the perfumed ghosts of a dozen wilting roses collapsing under their own beauty. Knife to her neck—the thought slithered through her mind, unbidden, unformed, like smoke escaping a fire too distant to see. She pressed her fingers to her temple, hoping to divine meaning from the chaos of the moment, but the jigsaw of letters refused assembly, scattered as though by some cosmic gust.

Words were a storm. They rained in torrents, fragmented and incomprehensible, soaking her thoughts with omens she had no strength to interpret. The post-it notes—cheerful yellows and pinks—spoke a language of lies, each one slapped haphazardly to the walls, the fridge, the bathroom mirror: “You’re stronger than this,” “One day at a time,” “Smile, because it happened.” Their saccharine optimism grated against the grinding in her chest, the truth she could not ignore: she was falling, spinning into the gravity of some unseen event she could not stop, only anticipate.

Across town—or maybe just across the hall—he poured amber whiskey into a chipped glass, his movements sluggish, like a marionette whose strings had frayed. The top-shelf bottle mocked him; it wasn’t his whiskey, it wasn’t his glass, and yet here he was, owning it all with the hollow gravitas of a man who sold everything, including himself. The liquid swirled, catching the dim light like a memory trying to surface, but it went nowhere, dissolved into the haze of his thoughts.

The voices came next. They always did. They whispered in tones too low for words but loud enough to unsettle, to make him wonder whether the sound was inside or outside his skull. They took aim, their intent barbed and deliberate, yet the execution was silence—a silence that curled down his spine, as intimate as a lover’s breath but as cold as the shiver it left behind.

She saw it coming—whatever it was. She always did. The omen hung in the air between them, a phantom that moved between their lives, threading their disjointed existences together like a careless seamstress stitching a wound. And still, the knife stayed at her neck, its edge a promise, a prophecy, waiting for the final rose to collapse under its own weight.

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.

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

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.

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.