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.

She leans into the petals,
skin dissolving into soft color,
the green veins of leaves brushing her arms
as if they have always known her.

His voice, a thread of dusk,
winds around her wrists,
pulling without force,
settling in the quiet space
between her ribs.

Her breath, uneven,
presses against his mouth,
a drowning in tenderness,
a weight both unbearable and light.

She does not resist.
She does not speak.
She simply disappears
where the flowers open.

Blade cuts through the dusk,
Tulips bow with fleeting grace,
Shadows stretch to meet the night—
Silent petals fall.

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.

love is a wild
   whispering river
        where hearts t u m b l e
          in sweet chaos,

sacrifices linger—
   soft shadows,
      breathless echoes of
        what we give,

i am a pearl
   of kindness
      resting on your tongue,
         a promise,
         a fluttering
      in the d a r k.

nature cradles
   our wounds like
      fragile flowers,
         blooms of forgiveness
      s t r e t c h i n g toward the
            light of new beginnings,

in the womb of the universe,
   we breathe life into dreams,
      acknowledging the
         precious moments,
   sharing secrets
      whispered in the night—

and in the soft
   embrace of dying,
      we find the
         thread of healing,
   weaving yesterday
     into tomorrow—

oh, how we dance,
   the endless embrace,
      two souls
         spinning in
    the bittersweet
   rhythm of existence,

celebration in every touch,
   a symphony of heartbeats,
      where joy and sorrow
         i n t e r t w i n e,
   crafting a tapestry
      rich with love’s
   enduring grace.

They make their entrance—
She in lipstick red, he in black,
A beacon and a shadow,
All eyes on them,
Where whispers collide
And lower boundaries break.

Jealousy blooms—
A ripened fruit, **** and swollen,
A secret bite beneath his skin,
An angry itch crawling inwards,
She, the *****, the sin, the blame—
A ***** temptation,
An addiction burned into the flesh.

Strangers move among them,
Faces of mirrors reflecting her shame,
Eyes refracting his rage,
Life stretches thin,
An LSD trip spiraling,
Searching for meaning
In symbols of truth
Without faith to anchor
The screaming void.

Why the waiting?
Why the blame?
She—
The failure to society’s equation,
They—
A fleeting beautiful façade,
Polaroid shots and pixelated likes,
A collage of nothing,
Of no regrets,
Of red smears on broken mirrors,
And the scent of smoke lingering
Long after the fire dies.

things break—
(always)—the weight of
air bends glass
the soft touch of
a hand can ruin
the threadbare lace of time.

see:
the bridge collapses
not from thunder but from
a whispered wave;
& leaves
never fall without breaking
into rain.

even stars crackle—
embers of light split
across the Architect's canvas,
threadbare constellations
that no longer
hold.

but perhaps
(it is written
in the marrow of creation)
that breaking
is not ruin
but a turning:

this shatter is the song
of a world remade,
of a sky that bleeds
its gold into
the earth.

(even the great
Architect, it seems,
lets things fall)
so that
we may learn
to build.

Time eats its decay,
Bouquet of flowers wilts slow,
Welcome fades away.

into the
   glitter of
your own
               (un)holy
                       shimmer—
            a reckless
   riot of
jo(y)
       that burns
too bright
          and leaves
   you hollow
   like a house
after the
          storm

   oh!
to feel alive is
   unbearable
       (the world
sings)
          in your veins
   a song
           you never
   learned to hold
     (the weight
of breath)
          like a
     broken elevator
   plummeting
into the dark
               basement
       of you

“i’m fine,” you say
                     “this time”
       (you promised)
but here you are—
   back in the
      hollow,
           dragging
the weight
        of your
    own
   lies

it tastes like
rust, regret,
      (the blackness)
sleeping feels
like sinking—
   how do you tell
them you’d
        rather not
   wake tomorrow?

“i’m sorry”
        sticks in your
throat;
they want your
           light
but you’re out,
   out like
   a flickering
candle
          (the itch,
   the need)
to chase the
   next high,
               a needle,
     a prayer—
and still,
    it spits you out
           again,
this cycle,
   this sickness,
        this burden
      no one asked for

you sleep, hoping
to find a softer
   somewhere—
far from the
      endless climb
and the crash,
   wanting to rest
forever,
         but you wake,
            again.
and again,
   and again.

The motel sat squat and lonesome in the middle of nowhere, like a bad idea that couldn’t quite die. Pull over those shotgun thoughts, she’d said, her voice thin as cigarette smoke, half-love, half-warning. In the backseat, a wisp of a memory stirred—bodies colliding like busted stars, creamy petals dropping one by one onto cheap upholstery. The slap of reality had come later, sharp as a motel key left unclaimed at the desk.

Inside, the jukebox wheezed out its eternal last rites to broken men, women, and jukeboxes. Black coffee steamed in the booth, untouched. She stared past it, past him, past everything. He’d tried "I'm sorry," tried it on a napkin, in a thousand different intonations, but the words were as empty as her half-lidded eyes. Drunken pleas didn’t move her anymore. Deep down we don’t change, she’d said once, tracing a cigarette burn on the table. He hated that she might be right.

The fears swam in his head like rats in the pool out back—too filthy to save, too stubborn to drown. Every motel had them: rats, ghosts, people like him. The long drives didn’t help, the sleeping pills didn’t help. Family therapy was a joke they didn’t laugh at anymore.

Outside, the desert was a ******’s heartbeat, long and taut, waiting to pull the trigger. No welcome home here, no open arms. Sacrifices made, yes, but not counted. That was the rule. He felt the morphine blues of goodbye coming, their ugly melody too hard to respond to. Wish you were here, his mind whispered, but the words were jagged and broke apart before they reached his lips.

After dark, the days of handovers and cheap dreams faded into something worse: the truth. On our deathbeds, maybe we all regress. Memories stay young at the moment of disaster. He imagined her stepping away from tomorrow's drama, just far enough to let the edge of her dress brush against it.

“Help the invalid,” she’d said once, her voice sticky with mockery. Was that him now, the invalid? Maybe. He didn’t answer her then, and she didn’t wait for it. She never waited.

He lit a cigarette, setting fire to everyday troubles, or at least pretending to. The creamy petals were all gone now. Only the thorns remained, brittle and unforgiving.

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.

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.

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.

the printer crashed
to the floor (a gasp of silence
shattering)
cat skittered
across the linoleum, early
hours bruised with moonlight's pallor;

coffee table turned (a revolution
unfolding) mugs and glasses
spilling their tired guts—
ashes, cigarette butts,
dead insects embalmed in dust.

and he (oh, the weight of he)
shouted—
not like him, not like the calm
fortress of patience
he fashions himself.

but the cat,
that anarchist
of whisker and claw,
defied his law and order,
mocked his trembling
manhood (a fragile empire
in the flick of a tail).

and so (with fire in his veins)
he decrees—obedience.
the cat must bend,
a creature
of chaos pressed into the mold
of his control.

but oh,
this linoleum,
this midnight rebellion—
it is not so easily erased.

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.

The aspens quiver, brittle spines trembling,
a broken orchestra of gold and ache,
her feet carve the earth raw,
mud smears like confession,
the world swallows her,
skin slick with its wet approval.

Here, the sky does not accuse.
It hangs, mute and thick,
secrets buried beneath roots,
writhing like forgotten daughters.
Her smallness presses against the weight,
a quiet scream lodged in her ribs.

The ground hums its absolution,
a Eucharist of dust and decay.
She, unmothered, unfathered,
folds herself into the soil’s indifference,
her anger spilling like blood in the light.

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.