The greatest betrayal?

When the positivity-giver isn’t so
positive themselves. When the light
they hand out doesn’t reach their
own shadow.

Belief in self-worth— they say it’s
your shell. But I haven’t found the
pearl that fits my shape.

Still liquid—I form myself to every
room, shape my smile to fit their
forecast. These tears? Not weakness.
Just soil erosion.

Washing away what held me—
leaving me bare, unready for tomorrow’s
weight. Like the trampled flower—
I’m not phased. I remember the feet
that pressed me into the same ground
I bloomed from.

I haven’t forgotten all those soles
that stepped on my feat.

Reflective tears— but none fall.
Glass-stained eyes, holding back
a flood that forgot how to break.
The walls pit inward— tightening
like regret, closing in like the hole
in my heart.

Hurt me again— my mind almost
begs for it; not for the pain—but
for the proof I still feel.
Cracked knuckles answer what
cracked thoughts can't say.
A fractured mental frame
held together by restraint.

I want to cry, but as I reach for the
memory of it, the tears don’t come—
Just the hollow ache of forgetting
how to let go in that way.
It be like that some days...

Pictures of my present— but none of them smile back.
Just me, talking to the man in the mirror,
    his eyes tired,
          his silence loud.
He stands in the frame, wrapped in skins made of fear—
To stand tall beneath the titles they gave him;
layered, worn,
  worn down.

To call it strength when you pretend to be more than you are.
But no one asks what it costs to keep holding up the
image they’ve
        painted of you.
I want to stop performing, but giving up feels like giving in
to everything they already believe about me, there's never an
account for the fallen man—
        only fingers pointed,
  as they count him out like a statistic.

I think about a demise so often it no longer shocks me.
It just waits—patiently— like something I’ve already
   shaken hands with,
    gripped by time pressing on me.
Sometimes I feel like I’m boiling alive, my chest
cracking open with a salty crunch, like a crab
   in a sealed ***—
    no escape, just steam and pressure.

A slow, bitter truth: no one’s turning the heat down.
And all I can say is—
   “Crap.”
     Not funny. Not light.
Just the word that stumbles out when your soul folds
in on itself and even pain doesn’t know
how to explain itself anymore.

A pistol tucked inside my heart—
memories of old dreams echo like bullet
wounds. Freedom comes, quietly, when
I finally let myself be known to myself.

Lips are like public transport;
they carry heavy loads:
sometimes love, sometimes doubt.

But the private lifts? Those are the words
we whisper to ourselves when we’re trying
to lift ourselves up, above our own doubts.

What loads are you carrying? Will your
transport make...or break someone?

Because belief in your own worth is such
a heavy load. And no— it’s not something
you should carry alone.

The weight of any load feels lighter when
the ones you love—and who love you back—
don’t just stand beside you; they help you
carry what you were never meant to bear alone.

I’m in a drought for time— yet flooded with ideas.
as the sun rises with the dust, and by dusk, all hope
feels spent, or quietly scattered.

I know destiny calls— even without a map, signal
or a location marked. "Yeah, I don’t know what
I’m doing," I often confess, in quotation marks—
still walking toward the shape of who I’m meant
to become.

Pushing through bruises and bitter slights—real joy
flickers, but most smiles still feel perfectly rehearsed.
To stay above the arrows, but never ahead of myself—
sharp enough, still, to pierce through the soft fabric
of my many, many daily doubts. And I’m learning:
sometimes the cage has no door— but only the illusion
of one, built from fear.

There’s always a world just outside of it— waiting.
We’re all just finding ourselves day by day.
And life? It’s one day after another— until, finally,
you recognize the person you've been becoming
all along.

Don’t close your eyes on your dreams—
you’ll lose sight of what you believe.
The will of your work is measured by
the work you’re willing to put in.
As I live in a house of emotions,
courting words to plead my case—
bleeding through a see-through face.
A quiet ache, always on trial.

Knowing that the high-and-mighty
Christian is the easiest target to bring down.
Careers cut short— because in short, they
never really knew the Lord.

And me?

I live like the world’s greatest plot twist,
my mind a tornado of thoughts—
every turn unexpected,
every breeze loud with questions.
I’ve known the chill of a cold finger turned
trigger. And felt the weight of a sharp tongue
used as a silencer. As it’s easy to shoot yourself
down the same way you shoot others—whether
whispered or screamed out loud.

But those who follow their worth,
instead of searching for it in the crowd—
those are the ones who stand out.
Aloud.

In a brief squeeze, my chest wheezed—
there goes my heart, falling out of itself,
into another rhyme, into another line.
Queue me up for feeling less than myself,
lost in being so lost.

Letting go of old grievances just to make
room for new ones today.
“I’m not okay”—
but I won’t say it, because you MAYBE
won’t think of me the same.

Sometimes I’m determined, other times,
indulgent. I look like I’ve got it together,
but beneath the surface,
I’m exhausted—
completely out of order.
Struggling. Sweating.
But short on words to explain what’s wrong.

I’d be seen as too much for speaking my
pain aloud— but pain is always louder
when it’s silent.

So I speak now for those who are just like
I am.
We are We:
navigating identity crises in these
stretched-out teen years of our twenties.
We are plenty— and still enough to
surround each other in love that counts,
instead of letting life count us down
or count us out. We will rise. Together.