To clench a thorn is quiet agony,  
Its sharp whisper burns endlessly near.  

The tighter the grasp, the deeper it cuts,  

Love’s echo fades when drowned in fear.  

Once released, the shadows lighten slow, The wound breathes soft, begins to mend.  

To lose the grip on what won't stay  
Is to find the start, not the end.

We grow not by the ticking hand,  
But by the weight of hearts unmanned.  

Each loss, a root beneath our feet,  
Each storm, the shaping of our heat.  

Maturity bears no time-bound chain,  
But sprouts through joy and tempered pain.  

A silent bloom where trials ignite,  
The soul grows wiser in their light.

I gave my coin, my honest hold,  
to claim the promise, not fool’s gold.  
No gift I seek, no mercy shown,  
just fair return for what I have sown.  

Not greed, but truth, in simple kind,  
deliver what was pledged, outlined.  
No silk-lined trap, no gilded air,  
just what is owed, in equal share.

I walk like smoke,
thinned out,
a shadow nobody notices.

Every word I speak
feels too loud,
like a spoon scraping metal,
and I see the wince in their eyes
before they hide it.

I laugh at the wrong time,
stay too long in the doorway,
trip over my own name
God, how tiring it must be
to endure my presence.

I used to think I mattered,
that someone would miss me
if I disappeared.
Now the silence answers for them,
and it is sharp.

I am a weight they do not ask to carry,
a stain they cannot scrub,
a voice that echoes only against
the hollow walls of my own chest.

Lost.
Unwanted.
The kind of forgotten
that feels like being erased
in real time.

If I am annoying,
then let me be forgotten quicker.
If I am forgotten,
then maybe the ache will quiet.

Until then,
I shrink,
I fade,
I turn my own heart inside out
and whisper apologies
to no one listening.

Blue Gitanes smolder in my hand,
Blue Chivas burns down my throat,
Blue has always been my compass,
the shade I carry like a second skin.
Blue is my life
a cigarette’s smoke,
a sip of fire,
a sky that never ends.
Blue,
I love you.

They told me in the hospital,
with white walls echoing like a tomb,
"Your wife is dead."
I stood there, hollow,
my ears ringing with the absurdity of it.
I wanted to go home,
sit at her feet,
and tell her what happened
so she could tell me what to do
because that is how life worked:
I carried my burdens,
and she untied them with her hands.
She was my wife, yes,
but more than that
she was my mother when I faltered,
my friend when the night grew too heavy,
the compass I leaned on
when the road split into shadows.
Without her,
the air has no map.
The rooms in our house
stare back at me like strangers.
The bed is an endless field of absence.
Oh God,
why is it that women
are not like her anymore?
Why must her kind vanish
the kind who pour themselves out
until the world is softer,
the kind who hold you steady
when you don’t even know
you’re falling?
If love was a language,
she was its first word
and its last silence.
And now I am left,
stammering,
trying to spell my life
without her name.

After our first date
takeaway by the river,
red wine staining her lips
she leaned in and said,
“Life is too short for boring dates.
Let’s make this one unforgettable.”
I followed her heat
straight to the next hotel,
where clothes fell like lies,
where her breath hit my skin
and her body begged mine raw.
We loved until the night was torn open,
until the walls sweated with us,
until nothing existed
but the burn of her thighs
and the ache of my hunger
buried inside her.
Morning was cruel,
coffee fast,
her eyes still wicked.
She pulled on her clothes,
kissed the air instead of my mouth,
and left me with the echo of her body
her goodbye sharp as teeth.