The branches lattice beneath her, black veins
etching the earth's sallow skin. She lies
as if pinned, a moth, the ground
opening its throat to devour her whole.

The trees, thin-limbed and aching, lean in,
their shadows like fingerprints
on her bare thighs. He is above her,
a dark weight, his breath thick
as the stench of iron. Crooked teeth
graze her tender insides, his mouth
a cavern of rot. Her chipped nails catch
on his skin, splintering her last defense—
each struggle a hymn he hums through his teeth.

The bass thumps in the distance,
a pulse too far to save her. His rhythm
is sharper, faster, a saw grinding
through the fragile architecture
of her. Her pelvis cracks beneath
his thrusts, her fragility undone,
his pleasure oozing into her wounds.

Before this—before him—there was the Dragon.
Silver foil unfolded like a revelation,
blue smoke crawling through her lungs,
its touch an anesthetic hymn. She exhaled
herself into nothingness, a slip of a girl,
a husk, unseeing. Vulnerability etched itself
into her marrow. The trees,
silent anatomists, catalogued her surrender.

Now, she is a secret the earth consumes,
her body a whisper the soil licks clean.
The trees will remember the taste of her,
their roots tangled in her hair, their leaves
swaying with the rhythm of her fall.
No one else will know—
only the trees, their mouths sealed with bark,
their witness as still and eternal as stone.

The wanderer walks, a restless breeze,
Through promises, through broken seas—
Crimson rain, it softly falls,
A girl transformed by midnight's calls.

The apocalypse, a nearing tune,
Chaos blooms beneath the moon.
Kneeling low, on trembling ground,
The secrets burst without a sound.

Raven hair, with thorns adorned,
Amber eyes by demons mourned.
They broke us down, they built a spire,
A city wrought from heart's desire.

We fled to woods, to wolves and scars,
To twinkle lights in mason jars.
On berry beds, we whispered prayers,
For oceans vast and circling snares.

The circle breaks; the past unfolds,
Her face a mask of ageless molds.
Porcelain breath, a sigh of smoke,
Memories echo, unprovoked.

Confined, we dream of open skies,
But silence calls for sacrifice.
The night, it begs, it softly pleads,
For healing born of choices' seeds.

I didn’t mean to let them go—
those words, quick and sharp
as shattered glass. They fell
between us, brittle echoes
splitting the air. I heard them
before they landed,
felt their weight twist my tongue,
knew they’d cut through
what we hadn’t yet finished weaving.

And still, you stood.
Not a wall, but a tree
rooted in wind.
Your breath was slow, deliberate,
a tide that didn’t rise
to meet the storm of me.
Your eyes held me—
not as something to punish
or praise,
but as something still learning
to soften.

Behind you,
your daughter sat silent,
her small frame
pressed into the edges of a room
too big for her understanding.
Not mine, but yours—
her love carried in the tilt of her gaze,
her trust braided into
the rhythm of your voice.
She doesn’t yet know
that words can be knives,
can bloom into scars
years later,
but she knows the way
your hands move—
slow, careful,
as if nothing in this world
is worth breaking.

I watch her watching you,
her young face
a map of wonder and inheritance.
And I wonder if she’ll see
how your quiet
isn’t silence,
but a language of its own—
the kind that teaches without telling,
the kind that steadies
without asking for praise.

Even now,
when I am the storm
tearing through our stillness,
you meet me
not with fire, not with force,
but with the weightlessness of water.
You press truth
into the hollow of my palms,
into the chaos of my mind:

We are not the words
we wish we could unsay.
We are not the wounds
we carry like heirlooms.
We are the spaces between the noise,
the quiet that stays
after the breaking.

I don’t know how to thank you—
not for your strength,
but for your refusal
to make it into armor.
For the way you hold love steady,
a flame too patient to flicker,
even when the wind rises.

What happened to you?—the Question hangs—
A specter on the Air—
There’s Something—gnawing at the Bones—
And Madness stirs in There—

A Sin—a Stain upon the Flesh—
No Cleansing can Repeal—
The Laughter of a Distant Hell—
Resounds—a Brazen Peal—

He struck—Repeatedly—a Thorn—
Against a Petaled Grace—
And claimed—the Fracture of her Soul—
Was not—a Man’s Disgrace—

"I feel—quite Fine"—the Monster said—
Before the Hunger came—
And ripped away—the Veil of God—
To stoke—an Ancient Flame—

She fled—a Wolf without her Cloak—
To Secrets—of the Trees—
While Echoes of his Jagged Cry—
Rose on the Timid Breeze—

No Answers—Waited on the Hill—
No Truth beneath the Stone—
But Evidence—of what Was Done—
Is Etched—in Flesh and Bone.

three days running
(body’s unraveling
the threads of itself
loose stitches yawning wide—)
but my mind
(my manic, my impossible mind)
spins
and spins
and
spins

the ceiling
a vast white ocean
of thoughts unswallowed
while gravity forgets me,
floating on this frantic tide of
(silence?) no,
the hum of all the hours
I should have slept.

oh how cruelly awake,
how absurdly alive,
to feel this lightbulb brain
(scorched, buzzing)
while my knees buckle under the weight
of their own existence.

there will be collapse.
(there will always be collapse.)
but for now,
this manic orchestra
plays on,
its violins tuned to the scream
of a body desperate for dark,
its brass blaring a melody
only the sleepless can hear.

Through shards of glass—distorted clear—
The breath of hope alights,
A fleeting second—woven near,
Then swept in endless flight.

The wing of Remorse, black and wide,
Soars grave—yet softly falls,
While stillness sings where beggars bide,
Their truth in whispered calls.

A fragile bird—its trembling wing—
Descends on open palm,
And in its light—a sacred thing—
The universe is calm.

I weep, and diamonds touch the soil
Of budding hands below,
Their petals rise as mine recoil—
In steady, fading flow.

Dawn casts its gold—a quiet flame—
Upon a barren lane,
Where every branch, by birth reclaimed,
Shudders with joy, not pain.

Oh, breathe! Into the desert womb,
Where life is yet to stir;
Where time is blood—a crimson bloom—
The cosmos’ whisperer.

The lips part faint—the mist exhaled,
Through forests memory-bound,
As scars arise—like ghosts unveiled,
Their echoes all around.

The wolves approach, their foaming jaws—
A temple left to fear,
Where shadows roam and light withdraws,
To eclipse the mind’s veneer.

But truth lies not in mirrored eyes—
Nor past, nor future’s haze;
It lives in fragments, unadvised,
Beyond the jealous gaze.

We float, we fall—we rise, we cease,
And yet, within this span,
The realness of this moment’s peace
Holds all that ever can.

You took my pulse,
Unraveled it, thread by thread,
Until the spool of my years
Sat empty in your hand.
Your lies came like tides,
Swollen with the moon’s silver pull,
Rushing in, foaming and gnashing,
To drown the fragile towers
I carved from sand.

I hate you—
The way I hate sharp things
That beckon with promise of release,
The way I hate mirrors,
Winking their cruel truths at dawn.
If I could wield my loathing
Like a blade,
I’d etch your betrayal into your skin.

But still, it is me who bleeds,
Me who swallows the salt
Of your restless seas.
You, the storm, the tide,
The cruel rhythm
That broke the best years of my life
Against your jagged rocks.

Now, the castles we dreamed
Crumble in the clouds,
Their ghostly spires spiraling upward—
Untouchable, unreachable.
And I, a husk,
Stand knee-deep in the wreckage,
Knowing that even the moon
Mocks my rage,
Unchanged by the chaos
You left behind.

The body learns to lie before the mouth does.
She moves like seaweed caught in a current,
the siren song of her hips pulling others closer—
a collision, a shatter.
Hormones bloom like coral,
bright and false,
a reef of dopamine
where nothing survives for long.

Reality is a cruel lover;
its hands too heavy,
its voice too loud.
She asks herself,
do you still wait for love?
do you still have patience for the breaking?

When she confronts him,
his grin splits his face like a wound,
a predator's smile,
the sound of firecrackers between them,
smoke where the truth should be.
He speaks of a *******,
of giving his power away,
of someone else making his choices.
She cannot decide if this is freedom
or just another kind of cage.

She remembers herself,
the way tequila burned her throat,
the way she burned brighter,
a girl in red,
posed naked under the gaze of men
who painted her as both light and shadow.
She trusted their hands before they betrayed her.
Before she turned cold.
Before she fell silent.
Before she hid her fire.

Now, she is the ocean’s daughter,
sinking deeper,
listening to the song of water
as it whispers secrets only the drowned can hear.
She wonders:
Do the waves ever grow tired of crashing?
Does the salt remember being a tear?

She lets herself drift,
thinking maybe, just maybe,
the pressure of the deep
is a softer weight
than the heaviness of love.

you (lit) a fire
inside my bones – soft (slow)
hands taught flame to breathe (to
grow) until
you ****** it dead

My Muse arises from his infinite sleep,
A whisper in the chasm where shadows creep.
In dream, I wander, blind and bare,
A child of silence, feeling air.

The trees, skeletal, shake their spines,
Releasing relics from hidden shrines—
Trinkets, tokens, sins of old,
Each frozen now in hues so cold.

Scarred and brittle, the silhouette breaks,
Bones through black, the body aches.
Yet dew, soft balm, on wounds does fall,
A salve for the soul—if anything at all.

His kiss is death; his promise, surrender,
A union cruel, both dark and tender.
But light unmasks what shadows veil;
The birdcage opens; the spirit sails.

The seed, though scattered, may still take root,
A fragile hope in a world of soot.
The strings now wail, the hymn is done,
A mother’s lullaby beneath the sun.

The mirror water, smooth and wide,
Reflects the soul I’ve set aside.
My hair, like tendrils, floats and trails;
The ripples grow, the weight unveils.

Pure, at last, the guilt does fade,
A shadow now where sorrow stayed.
Depression lingers—a faithful shade,
Guardian of all the vows unmade.

Don’t look back—his eyes are mine,
Vacant, lost, a shared design.
The ****** weeps her crimson thread,
A river carved through the still, the dead.

Smoke ascends where wars still rage,
A fog that blurs the infant page.
Unborn eyes accuse, demand,
Yet ghosts remain with stilled, grave hands.

I seek, I bleed, disciple torn,
Haunted by truths both sharp and worn.
The quiet watches, soft and grim;
No judgment passed, no prayer, no hymn.

touching down
on a field of golden ripe wheat stalks,
she—mother, sister, lover,
car crash.
she cut the ties clean,
drove off, left the old parade
of dead faces and long stares.
her mother, her father,
those barrel mouths
spitting bullets made of
you’ll never be enough.

the roots?
they never reached deep.
shallow soil,
rocks full of their anger,
their ultimatums killed their child
before the first breath.
all she had left
was what is happening?
over and over
until it became
a silent chant
in her dry mouth.

doubt grew in her
like weeds in cracked pavement,
pushing through the silence,
splitting her skin open—
but no one noticed.
no one cared.

now,
she’s gone from them,
driving with the headlights off
into the deep black of
what’s next.
they don’t even know it,
but she buried them
back in that wheat field.
their words,
their bullets,
their roots—
all rotting in the dirt.

I am the meek one, soft as milk,
The lamb in the dew’s first breath,
Trailing petals in a path to slaughter,
Eyes wide, heart blooming with trust.
The air whispers its secrets:
"Be still, be still,
Your blood will nourish the roots."

But beneath the quiet mask,
The dormant beast waits, claws coiled.
Her breath rattles in the dark of my lungs,
Her eyes gleam in mirrors I dare not meet.
She sharpens her teeth on the bones of silence,
A warrior clothed in shadow,
Bound to the pulse of her restless blade.

I walk the tightrope stretched between us,
Each step a hymn to fragile peace.
But the scales groan, the weight shifts—
Balance is a fickle mistress.
The lamb whispers, "Mercy,"
The beast roars, "War."
Their voices weave through my veins,
Twin rivers threatening to flood.

The line beckons, a seam stitched with fire,
Daring me to cross, daring me to break.
The lamb trembles at the precipice,
The warrior takes her hand.
It is not choice but inevitability—
A tide surging through the marrow of my bones.

I am both the hunter and the hunted,
The blade and the throat it kisses.
Change is a storm I cannot deny;
War is a dance I must learn to master.
The lamb bleeds, the beast awakens.
There is no balance, only fusion,
Only the becoming of something whole.

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.

Fingers trace her face,
water whispers soft goodbyes,
grief flows like the stream.

drifting (torrential) dreams—
loose as vagabonds,
their gentle hum (suspicions of
burning bridges),
the pinhole of today
collapses (like breath through
a cracked window).

(government listens
to birds
kiss
satellites goodnight;
their frequency is
a whalesong—
a wind heard
only in the hollow
of you/me/us).

we (trust) like branches
struggling
toward a reflection of
not-quite-sky.

make it (code) names transcendence.
make it seconds (resonating)—
a journey (intimate,
an interrogation) of
(expectations to
accept) the sound
we sing together.

Seeking shelter from the whispers’ breath,
The cross digs deep, her burdened path.
Her shoulders bow to grief untold,
Impregnated by hope grown cold.

Enemies masked in waltzing guise,
Spin circles beneath deceiving skies.
She bows graciously to his eminence tall,
A shadow looms, a silent call.

"Where are you from?" they question her so,
"From nowhere," she answers, a truth of woe.
"A ******* child, unwanted, unseen,
An echo of sorrow where life had been."

Candlelight flickers, betraying her years,
Its glow etching lines, language of tears.
Thoughts breach barriers, a storm in flight,
Black stallions pound through the veils of night.

He liked to play tricks, her torment, her plea,
A curse spun in pity, her shadow’s decree.
The ghost of him lingers, a sparrow’s ascent,
Her innocence pure, but her spirit bent.

Fading to madness, a lover’s embrace,
Embroidery patterns the fabric of grace.
The past weaves its threads, each stitch a scar,
A wraith’s pale flay in a world ajar.

No taste of codeine, no balm for the strife,
Defensive in virtue, her battle is life.
Through madness, through whispers, through sorrow’s long flight,
She vanishes softly into shadowed light.

Little child wanders,
wild forest whispers through the air,
Grandma stirs her ***.

Wrinkles tell her tale,
sentimental tears falling,
lonely nights persist.

Pregnant skies grow ripe,
radiant but angry clouds,
fist of thunder strikes.

The footsteps fall — then fade away —
As silence holds — the breath at bay —
Two hands — in quiet longing — meet,
A tremble — soft — and hearts entreat.

A fever burns — and must be still,
The world outside — they wish to **** —
The rain — it whispers — soft refrain,
Of stories lost — of fear and pain.

The elders' words — like serpents' hiss,
A promise sweet — a bitter kiss —
"Trust me, dear one — for I will save,
Your love — your life — from cruelest grave."

She calms the storm within her mind,
With *****'s balm — a solace blind —
His face is strange — his heart a lie —
But still — she dreams — where no one dies.

The flowers twine — within her hair,
She plays with children unaware —
Of all the rules — the bitter game,
Where whispers wear a nameless shame.

The demons smile — they will not harm,
They cleanse with beads — with prayer's calm charm —
"Forget your name, and curse the night,
The dawn will lift you into light."

But Death — a shadow — cold and near,
Sweeps in — and leaves no room for fear —
The dust — the warmth — no more to chase,
A fleeting dream — an empty place.

Wildflowers grasped in their hands,
Eyes expectant, waiting still—
Resplendent, she, in pearls and lace,
Crystals veiling iron will.

Upon a stallion, proud she gazed,
The cliffs below—waves, hungry, wild—
A dreamer young, her heart betrayed,
By guilt unpardoned, yet beguiled.

To marry love, the soul must pay,
An execution—hope undone.
Laudanum soothes the troubled night,
But daylight sees what grief has spun.

Rumors drift like soft exhale,
Tinkling laughter—shadows hide.
A sparrow leapt from trembling hands,
Defiant, boundless, unallied.

Death does not part, though life divides—
Choices, wounds that dare reveal.
Do we hurt to feel what’s real,
Or punish what we cannot heal?

Her fingers danced on shadowed skin,
Curtains swayed in darkness shared.
Together sought, together lost,
Unpredictable, love dared.

It is of no consequence, they said,
A black sheep wanders where none see.
Yet whispers linger, soft as waves—
A love alive, though never free.

Your tongue,
a blade that remembers
where I am softest,
where the scar tissue is thinnest.
You wield it without hesitation.

You ask for acceptance
as if I owe it
to the thing that has hollowed me out,
made me flinch at shadows,
left me raw and singing
with wounds I did not choose.

Sorrow has blackened the horizon.
The future—
a thing I used to believe in—
is now a quiet ache
that hums under my skin.

I flinch at your sarcasm.
It’s a whip,
a steady rhythm of harm
I cannot outrun.

And the problem you refuse to see—
it is breathing.
It is alive.
It soars above me like a black kite,
leaving me marked in ways
I can never explain.

I search for home
as though it’s a place that exists,
a place that will hold me
without splintering.

But you—
you crown yourself in their love
while their laughter
cuts you from behind.
Every sacrifice I make
is a ghost.

You hand them my offerings,
giving them weight they do not deserve.
And here I stand,
naked of hope,
bare of safety,
still whispering your name
like a prayer
to a god who doesn’t answer.

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.