My mother always complained about peeling pomegranates
It was never my hate, hating them became my habit
Hard wood on the outside, blood red under the fingernails
An expedition of crimson white, trapped in the details


With blade in hand, I sit and trace a seam,
A line so faint, like an old whispered dream.
The rind surrenders, the chambers appear,
Tiny nestled jewels, so crystal clear.
I crack the shell open as daylight spills,
The seeds scatter, like stars in hidden hills.
Each one a treasure-trove, each a prize,
Hugging each other beneath fragile skies.
Took my little knife and my little time
Picked up the ruby pieces and made them rhyme
Unlike my mother, I was successful
I don't think they were that messy—you just weren't careful.


A patience found in a quieted pace.
Letting it unravel was never a race
The skin, thick as secrets, does not tear wide,
Under rough hands, it cracks and cries inside
Press it to your temple, wait for the sound,
Heed the silent rubies, waiting to be found.
But rush the patience, and the fruit will weep,
The crimson stains will soon begin to reap.
Juice on your hands, on the table, the floor,
Chaos unleashed where there was calm before.

You’ll blame the pomegranate, curse its design,
Not seeing that the fault was never mine.
Ruby seeds didn’t wish to scatter at all—
I was never messy mother, you just weren’t careful.

Cooking is worth the mess.  
The spices, the sauces, the sticky spoons.  
The bowls, the pots, the empty plastic wrappers.  
Fragments of me scattered across the floor.  
Dreams hiding in the crevices, fears lingering at the base.  

Maybe I’m worth the mess, too.  
I am the recipe, a dish still in progress,  
A symphony coming together, no matter the excess.
It’s in the mess that flavors are born,  
Sweetness pulled from bitterness.  
Each scrape of the spoon, each flick of the wrist,  
A step closer to something whole.  
Each spill tells a story, every stain leaves a mark.
And like the meal simmered slow,  
From inedible to flavorful, I, too, can glow.  

As I clean the stubborn flour clinging to the shelf,  
I remind myself—the meal is worth the mess.
This beautiful, messy, imperfect process—  
It’s proof that I, too, am worth the mess.

She said it tasted good—
the salt, the cream, the cheese—
her words like a melody
I didn’t know how to hear.
Nothing was wrong?
But that couldn’t be.
My hands, so used to trembling,
Covered in doubt and oil.
I stood there,
awkward in my victory,
trying to accept the compliment
like a rusty vending machine
taking a crinkly dollar.

Insults come by the dozen,
Sharp dimes that cut me clean,
familiar in their weightlessness,
easy to pocket.

But these **** compliments,
they are a currency I can't trust—
complicated notes with symbols and pictures,
written in a language I must decode,
pressing them to the light
for counterfeit marks
before I dare believe their worth.

They stick to me like unearned badges,
heavy, yet soft,
Meant for a self I refuse to see.
Still, I hold onto hers,
tucked awkwardly in my palm,
a note I haven’t yet learned to spend,
but one I want, desperately, to believe.

I didn’t break down today.
I didn’t let anyone down.
I was a little bit more of myself than I was yesterday.
I made it through the day alone,
but the girl next to me called her mother
to tell her what she ate for lunch.

Her laughter spilled into the air,
a melody I didn’t know I missed,
a warmth I could never quite touch.
I traced the edges of my silence,
wondering if it had always been this loud.
The coffee tasted bitter but I drank it anyway.
A snowflake landed on the windowsill,
I waited for it to be blown away,
but it stayed,
and I stayed.

I didn’t call anyone today.
I put a pop song deep into my ears,
silencing out the words that I never heard.
I folded my loneliness
into a paper crane
and left in at the cafe,
its fragile shape, a quiet triumph.
The weight is still there
but my feet stayed planted.
Tomorrow, maybe,
I’ll build a bridge
out of these small victories,
and walk a little closer
to the sound of my own voice
telling someone what I ate for lunch.

Somewhere beyond the door
You are
Here, outside, I am
Lingering
Waiting for a glimpse
A passing wave
An imagined smile
A conversation that never happened
And a love i never confessed


I saw you walk in
I dare not enter myself
So I wait with my heart
Counting the beats that sound like your name
You'll never know
Because I'll never tell
You're a color I'm too dark for
Best never meet
Best admire from afar
Best yearn
Never hold

Maybe we're all just specks of dust
Lying on an old dresser
Waiting for someone to open a window
For someone to shake a bedsheet
And throw us into the air
To get our few seconds of spotlight

We rise, glinting in the sunlight's beam,
A constellation in a forgotten room,
Dancing to the rhythm of a careless breeze,
Free, if only for a fleeting moment.

Perhaps we settle back too soon,
Clinging to surfaces that never knew us,
But for that brief ascent, we were stars—
A story, if only in the eyes of light.

And maybe that’s enough:
To shimmer, instantaneously,
to let the world carry us
where it wills,
Knowing even dust
Has its time to shine.

There’s peace among graves. In the dead silence of night, graveyards are like a long exhale after years of holding your breath. You can hear the wind here. The night whispers of old demons and forgotten pets. The ground is alive here.
I overstay my welcome, night after night, a dying life among the living dead. The living world hums, a lot; explosions, glass doors, metal bullets, empty words. Too many things beyond my grasp—expectations, conversations, complications of generations. It’s so much and yet so little. Hollow screams of earning a future and mirages of a happy past. So much smoke and not a single spark. Here in the graveyard… here, there’s only the me, the silence, and my friends.
Maybe I drank the wrong gin. Maybe I ate a German delicacy that I wasn’t supposed to. Or maybe the world just broke me open and made a little room for the dead. I can’t say for sure, and I don’t wanna know either. Too many nights are lost to whys and hows; I prefer to stay in the now. Catch a bit of life before it passes me by, you know. Anyway, I don't know how it began, but I know that they talk, and I listen. The rest is just wool in a dryer.
I sit by Hermon’s grave, the stone cool against my back, and wait for the familiar heavy sound to drift up from beneath. I know it'll come. It always comes, eventually—soft at first, like a whisper carried on the wind.
“Fast day?” he says. He knows the answer. He asks out of courtesy.
“Fast day,” I murmur like it’s the heaviest thing in the world. And maybe it is, for now. The living spends so much time coming and going, but the dead… the dead stay. They’re reliable. Solid in a way that the world above ground never quite is.
I never asked for this, but I think I like it. I like the way the air feels heavier in the graveyard, the way the world seems to slow down around me. It’s the only place that makes sense anymore, the only place where the noise quiets down and I can just… be. I do think about how strange it is, this gift, or curse, or whatever it is. I don’t raise them, not really. I can’t make them spin around my ink-ridden nails. I can’t even call them back here with a wave of a twig. They don’t breathe, scream or rise. They just… speak.
And I listen, like I always do. It’s enough, I think. More than enough.
“Do you miss it?” I ask, not sure what I’m even asking about anymore. Life? Walking? The sky? Tiramisu? The world we used to share?
“Miss what?” Hermon’s voice floats up through the earth, drowsy, like he was remembering a dream he had half-forgotten. His voice always feels so heavy, like a barrel of wheat. What even was he tired of? Death? It sounds so peaceful. Maybe it's just a worm in his larynx.
“Everything.”
He chuckles, and the sound curls around me like a snake, faint but familiar. “Maybe. But there’s less to miss than you think. Up there, you’ve still got dreams and hopes. In here… it’s lighter. Quieter.”
Quieter. That’s it, isn’t it? Death is quiet. The dead don’t demand anything. No forced smiles, no awkward pauses to fill. Maybe an occasional letter to an old flame, but that’s much more manageable than a dozen texts that lead to nothingness. No Rachel, I'm not going to your third cousins’ wedding. I talk to the dead but you wouldn't care even if you knew.
I think that’s what I like about it, why I keep coming back. They don’t want anything from me, and that’s a rare gift. With them, there’s no pretending. No expectations. Just the steady rhythm of their voices, like waves lapping at the shore. Constant. Unchanging. Trustable.
I glance at the graves, shadows stretching long in the fading light. Nina, Kevin, Mr. and Mrs. Talbot. They’re all here, waiting. They always wait for me. I know how odd it sounds—necromancy, but lower; much, much lower. I'm just glad I have friends now. Friends that stay. Friends that'll always remain, bones and all. Hehe. But it’s not so strange, is it? Not really. The living have never understood me. Too busy trying to fit me into something I can’t be or don’t want to be.
Here, though? Here, I belong. I can sit with the dead and fit right in. I can hear them, and they can hear me, and that’s more than I ever got from the world above.
“What was it like today?” Hermon's voice slipped through the cracks of the earth, slow and careful, like he was afraid to shatter the fragile quiet between us.
“The same…” I say though the answer feels hollow. “… they’re always the same. Moving too fast. Talking too much, … saying nothing.”
“Hmm,” he hums, the sound low and thoughtful. “Maybe you didn’t listen enough.”
I nod, though he can’t see.
The wind picks up, brushing through the grass like a sigh, and I close my eyes. I don’t need to see to know they’re here. They always are. My friends. My strange, silent companions. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

In the distance, Nina’s voice drifts toward me, soft and laced with something I can’t quite place. “You’re staying, right?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, settling in against the stone. “I’m staying.”
And for once, that feels like enough. More than enough.