Concrete coffee grounds — stapled receipts;
messages from exes you’re not ready to delete.
It’s quiet now, filled with dead conversations —
a well-kept cemetery.
Ceremonies in eyeballed crowds, proclaiming
falsehoods of love in soft languages.
Meets and greets, all speaking the lies we
feed ourselves; sandwich boards worn like identity.

Some days, bored with myself, as I draw away
from a good time like a thin sketchbook filled
with half-drawn, abandoned things.
Pulling my heart from my chest like a drawer.
An artist, talking to his shadows —learning from
my old self like it’s shadow.

Avoiding those who tease with wet mouths of lies,
but kiss with dry tongues. Parched —
but maybe just too thirsty for love.
Being caught in a drought: a crumb of eye crust,
tinted with dry grass.
Still, I’d set myself on fire just to be noticed —
willing to be her wild campfire.
But even those fires need feeding.
You can’t give it all until you’re ash —
and watch them move on to another flame.

Making you feel not wild enough.
Staring at the ugly person in the mirror —
and what’s left after the smoke clears?
It's no longer a game of smoke & mirrors

Don’t go making the joke — you know, the one
that always hits a girl’s bad note. I used to laugh too…
until I got the notes on the subject, and learned,
this isn’t a punchline, but instead hits a girl like
a gut punch. The red dragon that cramps up in
its cave, where swinging at her mood swings
doesn’t make you brave.

She’s in the tide of her red-letter week — a storm
swelling beneath soft skin. Appetite shifts, touches
itch instead of soothe, and even thoughts lose their
rhythm, like radio static in a room full of noise.
And sometimes it's hard to think straight when
your own body is pulling sideways.

And those bloated comments... they don’t ease anything.
It’s a different pain for every woman, but one shared
thread: that you don’t get to add to it. As we may not
understand the full weight — but we can choose not
to pile more on.

And if you’re thinking of making a joke about it…
don’t. Period!

Sigh! It comes like a train — an express line through
my thoughts, no stops, no warnings. Oh how
DEPRESSION clips at my heels, familiar as shadow,
unwelcome as memory. Defeated — like sunlight
pressed to branches too burdened to bloom. My heart
hangs in moss — heavy, strangled in the green silence
of old grief.

Tears lean like leafless trees, bowed in all directions,
yet rooted in a place with no direction — a forest dying
quietly, where even the familiar trails feel like ghost
roads I no longer recognize.

I feel short of worth — like coins counted in silence,
never enough to buy the currency of being loved.
I glow in daylight, but dusk takes its due —
and now I dim with every breath.

I try to speak, but end up forcing books down my throat,
pages crammed with words I never learned to say.
But you’ll never see me cry in public — I’m an island
left off every map, burying bottle messages even
I won’t recover.

I have so much hopeful words for others, but I’m
a stack of unread stories to myself; a pen that dries
before I can name the ache.

And somewhere inside —I find a red box with hidden
compartments, each one meant to hold something sacred.
But they echo when I open them — soft, hollow
reminders that even my soul has forgotten how
to fill its space.

I’ve got finger stitches — love handed me needles;
the attentions of spiraling vines; some bear grapes,
but not all are ripe with maturity, some just needless.
Burning every bridge while the sky stays divinely nested,
and I’ve tied these knots around my tired heart,
left admiring birds of a feather — but never flying
south together — all bested.

They press your buttons just for their luck to press —
dim suggestions also light up the road to regret
Lessons in subtle form and silent —whatever mistakes
you walk into and out of, never forget their steps.

Hiking with joy into the last light of sunset; yes, we can
fall in love like the sun falls behind a mountain crest —
rising bright by morning, but crying in the dark —
perhaps this isn’t love yet.

And that’s okay.

Life is a wonder —no wonder I still wonder
how I made it to today. Life is what you make of it —
not like a butler who serves, but a self-made shape
you forge from struggle and grace.

We judge with our eyes, but on Judgment Day,
it won’t be our eyes that matter. And when that day
arrives —whether we walk or run to heaven’s gate —
know that love won't wear the form you tried to fit
into every heart.

To love in part means sometimes we must depart —
leave behind space wide enough for stars to breathe.
The emptiness you find may feel vague, but it’s where
meaning stirs quietly, and the hopes you laid on a lover
might be the very hope that led you astray.

We leave this place as ashes — but never to rest
in an ashtray. Because even dust has destiny,
and fire never forgets what it once warmed.
Life is a wonder — in both a good and bad way.
And maybe that’s enough.

Life isn’t always so amazing —
it’s a network of paths, tangled and shifting,
Where choices loop back,
and clarity takes the long way home.
But it’s not a maze thing.
There’s no clever exit, no final door.
Just detours, delays,
and questions that don’t come with maps.

It’s a hostile universe —not always loud,
but indifferent in the quietest ways.
A basic existence where even the basics
don’t always feel like they’re enough.
You breathe, you eat, you sleep —
but some days you feel so empty.
Like the days are leaning too hard
against your chest.

Some days, survival feels like success.
Other days, it feels like something
just shy of being a complete failure.
But even in that, there’s a small defiance —
to keep walking anyway,
to speak kindly into the static,
to carve out a corner of warmth
where no warmth was promised.

Not because it fixes the universe —
but because it changes you.
And maybe that’s enough
for now.

Two-step verification — it takes two to fall in love,
but that’s yet to be confirmed. Grinding gears just
to talk, shifting through awkward conversations,
but we can’t reverse all the bad things we’ve said
at those rushing high speeds.

Lovers with underwear conversations, trying to fix
what they barely understood, so unaware of what’s
really the problem. We run into relationships holding
open scissors —the result? Just another love story
cut too short.

But teach yourself to love someone new, still maybe
the lesson won’t stick. So brace for impact when they
say, "I truly love embracing you."

And I feel like Saturday news — as they talk about us
like weekend headlines. They say I left my imprint
on you, but that just comes from being pressed for
a time, rushing to report every mistake before the
feeling fades.

Needing nothing — and in the same breath, needing
each other. Yet neither of us has anything long-lasting
to give. To love someone with real deep depth while
they only offer surface depth. Lurid entertainments.
Frozen, unflattering coitus. And quoting someone else’s
expressions because we’re too shy to speak out our own
love language.

Two people, extending their existence — but modern
love feels like this: one of us still alive in the moment,
while the other is just living in a picture without you
in the end. ////// You claimed to be bound to each
other, but it was really bound to end