my house hums with broken wires
every plan short-circuits
before the switch clicks on

people touch me and spark,
burn their hands,
walk away smelling of smoke

so I stay ghostlike
pressing mute on every connection
watching the ceiling peel,
watching time drip slow

my body’s an old machine,
stuck between stations,
buzzing static where music should be

still, in the noise,
I keep tuning,
hoping one day
the song comes through

I give everything I have
and it still falls short.
Like throwing rope into the sky,
expecting it to catch a star.

The people who care
always stumble here,
as if my presence
changes the ground beneath them.

I tell myself it’s safer
to keep them outside the blast radius,
to let loneliness
be the price of sparing them.

Meanwhile, my body
keeps writing its slow warnings
in pain,
in fatigue,
in the quiet betrayals
of flesh and bone.

Yet some part of me
keeps standing,
keeps trying,
even with gravity
pulling harder every day.

The house groans with my failures.
Every project collapses
like wet paper left in the rain.

People step close,
thinking they can hold me up,
but I’m a broken frame,
sharp edges,
too heavy to carry.

So I push them away.
Better they bruise at a distance
than bleed at my side.

My body won’t bargain with me either.
It runs on fumes,
bones creak like old stairs,
lungs dragging air like stones.

And still
I wake,
I move,
I make do,
inside this crooked life
that doesn’t quite fit.

No age.
No mass.
Just motion.
I do not experience time.

To me, the beginning
and the end
of the universe
are the same blink.

I have seen the inside of your eye
and the bone of a dead star,
without stopping to ask
which was which.

You touch me like a whisper meant for no one,
Soft, fleeting, fading when the world looks away.
I reach, not to hold, but to be held,
In the quiet ache where your silences stay.

Would you notice if I disappeared in parts?
If I cracked my ribs just to make you look back?
Would you still see me in bruised silhouettes,
Or am I just the echo you never unpacked?

My mother taught me how to be still for others,
How to swallow storms and call it peace.
But I am not a pond, love. I am the sea,
And you sail me blindfolded, begging for ease.

You cried at the lake, and I broke with you.
Every bone in me folded like paper in rain.
I said the wrong thing. God, I always do,
But I’d drown a thousand times to lift your pain.

At night, there's a voice, not mine, not yours,
Singing about dancers and distance and fate.
It tells me I’m a line without a hook,
A verse unfinished, a heart too late.

You say I’m sweet, you say I’m kind.
But only when no one hears.
And I let you, every time,
Because rejection is better than disappearing.

So if you ever return, soaked and shaking,
Know that I am still standing where the tide breaks,
Not waiting, not hoping, just aching
In the place where your love never wakes.

I know I shouldn’t ache like this, I do,
You were never mine, not in word or vow.
Yet watching you with him, some part withdrew,
Like losing something sacred, even now.

I saw the signs, you turned your gaze away,
Laughed softer, answered slower, broke the thread.
But still I stitched my hope into each day,
Pretending you were paused—not gone, not led.

You never lied. You never called it love.
I wrote those dreams in ink you never touched.
You said “we’re friends,” and I said “close enough,”
While shaking hands betrayed I cared too much.

Now he walks with you where I once would dare,
My silence roars, and still I call it fair.

I loved you in the hush between two sighs,
Where glances flickered, stars that lost their flame.
Your voice, though gentle, bore no soft replies,
No echo shaped itself around my name.

I offered verses, filaments of grace,
Fine bridges spun from breath and tethered fire,
But you, like frost that veils a summer's face,
Withheld the warmth my trembling hopes required.

You did not break me. No, you were too kind.
Yet kindness, cold, can cut like polished steel.
A smile, misplaced, can hollow out the mind;
And silence teaches wounds too deep to heal.

So I retreat. Not bitter, but erased—
A violin, unheld, in silence cased.
Still strung with song that none will understand,
Still turned toward you, an unanswered command.