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.

in the hush of a universe
    she drifts—
        a whispering
    of light-years
blood like (royal blue)
    running thin
silver dreams
    slip out (of veins)
    a ghost in the pulse
    of tomorrow

foretold futures
        (whispering)
in static—
stay away from the force
    field
stay away from
    the wound

she the song of earth
    (mother) shedding seeds
into silence—
    a sacrifice
    shaped like a child
        forever naive
            forever changing

building a second skin
    a chance—
locking herself
    inside the ache
        of being

(periwinkle medication
    soothes nothing)
crimson saffron words
    burn like wildfires
        quiet abduction
            of self

still she moves—
scarred but standing
    a mantra, a martyr—
too human
    to be saved

There was a time I carried hurt
like a second skin—
every crack and scar a story I told myself,
a story I swore was true.

I cradled that pain like a child,
fed it, sang to it, let it grow inside me,
until its roots tangled with my ribs,
its leaves whispered in my lungs.
It became so familiar,
I forgot what it was like
to breathe without its weight.

But healing is a quiet rebellion.
It does not storm in;
it tiptoes like a sunrise,
peeling back the dark
layer by tender layer.

One day, I stopped asking why
and started asking how.
How do I unspool this thread of hurt?
How do I make space for the truth?
Not the truth I told myself to survive,
but the truth that sets me free.

It turns out, healing isn't forgetting.
It isn’t pressing rewind
or pretending the hurt was never there.
It’s holding it up to the light,
examining every jagged edge,
and saying, “I see you. But you don’t own me.”

I am learning that letting go
isn’t a loss; it’s a choice.
To let the past rest
without dragging it behind me.
To forgive—not for them, but for me.
To unclench my fists and find my palms
open, ready to hold joy again.

And now, as I walk forward,
I am lighter,
like a bird that has finally noticed
the sky has always been there,
waiting,
ready to carry me home.

Crashing waves roar loud,
white foam, rabid dogs' fierce growl—
shoreline bites the sky.

Generations listened, holding back tears,
as if the weight of history whispered
in the cadence of silence.
She pretended to sleep,
watching his prayers fracture the air,
each syllable a plea for forgiveness,
each word a lie she had already memorized.

He broke her innocence-
fumbling hands, snapping buttons,
sweat and tears mingling into something unholy.
"I will never leave you, my angel," he murmured,
as fingers pressed deeper into her,
a trespass she could not resist nor refuse.

Revulsion swallowed her whole,
his touch a poison, his presence a stain,
his words a scripture written in filth.
She will tell no one,
her secrets folding inwards like a flower
too afraid to bloom.
No fight, no flight, only silence,
an ache where her voice should be.

She escaped by becoming light,
a wisp of air, translucent and untouchable,
impure as a pearl rolled in dirt and time.
When he forced her open,
her mouth like a chirping chick
devouring his ****, a sin she could not cleanse,
she knew- h could not buy her,
not with fear, not with authority,
not with the brown ****** he dragged
like the ghost of his shame.
He was nothing-
a sad old man with a criminal record,
a shadow of power that dissolved
when touched by her refusal.
And so, she remained:
light, air, silence,
the dirt pressed against her skin
washed away with the years.

She had that sinking feeling,
like the weight of a ghost—
pressing cold truths on her shoulders,
a whisper too loud to ignore.
Something terrible had happened.
The room tilted,
and the confession spilled
from lips cracked with silence.

I’ll give your life meaning, she said,
a promise coiled in smoke,
early morning walk of shame,
heels striking pavement,
a rhythm for the unspoken.
Life intoxicating,
a kaleidoscope of ache and anesthetic.
For a moment,
I finally feel no pain.

Forget the rumours—
her psychosis lit like a matchstick,
spreading in the wildfire of small towns
and smaller minds.
Spare me your hypocrisy;
you watered the weeds
that tangled her voice.

But he loved her still,
in the way the moon loves the sea—
pulling her closer,
knowing she’d still pull away.
Always, he said,
and his words stitched her unraveling.
Even ghosts can’t carry everything.

red stains on the cup,
her lips' ghost,
a scarlet trace,
porcelain whispers,
no words,
no soft goodbyes left—
just silence to fill the
v
    o
  i
d.

She was not accustomed to kindness,
those gentle hands that held her,
soft like the breath of an answered prayer,
her bruises mended by strangers' sighs.
The sky whispered fragments of blue,
trees bent their branches towards her,
as if to cradle what the world had broken.

But they—oh, they—
turned her spirit on itself,
herded her like cattle
through corridors of regret,
or like lost souls in purgatory,
each step echoing a hymn of betrayal.

You cannot silence the ghosts,
their voices thin,
like needles threading the night.
They call in relentless whispers,
turning her heart into a restless sea,
a place where sleep is an exile
and dreams are unwanted guests.

No one asked her what she wanted,
not in that world of smoke and shadow.
They left her, discarded like ash,
as if she had no fire to offer.
A river of blood, her silent anthem,
flowed beneath her solitary feet.

Until a stranger came,
wrapped in the cloak of autumn,
bearing a voice like broken violins,
each note carrying a promise of salvation.
His hands moved gently,
as if piecing together
a stained-glass window of shattered lives.

She was not accustomed to kindness,
but she let herself be held.
And somewhere between the sky and the trees,
she began to believe
that even the unwanted
are worthy of love.

There’s a thread on her wrist,
red like pomegranate seeds bursting—
three knots tight as a mother’s secret,
three wishes pressed between breaths
when the world looks away.
She whispers into the glitches—
the way the sky skips like a scratched vinyl,
the way the ground hums
just before the fall.

She doesn’t blink anymore.
It’s all there,
in the corner of your mouth,
in the pauses where words drown themselves.
She hears the notes you never played,
sees the shadow in the mirror’s gasp,
speaks to the silence like a sister.

The bracelet taught her the language of sap
and stone and the ocean’s bite.
It sings in loops, an ancient chorus—
not yours, not mine,
but something older than the first mistake.

Three knots, she says,
for the door that never stays shut,
for the stars stitched into her palms,
for the moments where time hiccups and forgets itself.

And when she speaks,
it’s not a voice—it’s a frequency,
a vibration you feel in your ribs
like a forgotten childhood song.
She turns her wrist—
the red thread catches the light—
and the world unravels for her,
one gift, one glitch, one truth at a time.

He stirs the dawn with the hum of the kettle,
Steam rising like ghostly whispers,
A quiet ritual of devotion—
The spoon clinks, the cup warms my hands,
His unspoken vows brewed dark and sweet.

Fingers weave through the chaos of my fevered hair,
A tenderness that binds more than braids,
Each twist a thread of solace,
A promise wound tightly,
As if to tether me to something steady.

His jacket, draped over my shivering bones,
Hangs heavy with his scent, his warmth,
A shield against the indifferent wind.
He never asks if I need it—
He simply knows.

Safety is not the fortress but the watchman,
The way his shadow falls across my fears,
How he sees what I cannot say
And says nothing,
Only lingers long enough to make the dark retreat.

These are the quiet revolutions of love,
Not grand, not loud,
But steady as the tide,
Small acts that hold me upright,
That stitch me whole.