It starts like a whisper
threadbare promises,
soft hands hiding clenched fists
beneath the skin, bruises bloom quietly,
seeds of silence sowed in the dark corners of a home.

A smile fractured at the edge,
where love's architecture crumbles,
and the voice that was once free
is twisted into the shape of a question:
Am I not enough?

A door slams, not in anger
but in fear.
The echo swells in the bones,
stays in the walls,
turns a house into a prison
where every footstep is weighed with caution,
a rhythm of dread,
beating louder than the heart.

The world outside spins on,
but inside; there is no time,
no refuge, no escape.
Even sleep is just another war fought alone,
dreams choked by the shadow creeping
over pillowcases and quiet sighs.

And yet,
the grasp tightens with a smile.
It is tender, this violence,
a slow suffocation dressed as affection,
coated in apologies that evaporate
before they touch the air.
It doesn't arrive with storms,
but with lullabies that cut deeper
than screams ever could.

What is love in a house that forgets
the meaning of sanctuary?
Where the windows close
to keep the world out
and the mirrors crack
under the weight of too many lies told in silence?

It hides in plain sight,
in the slow erosion of spirit,
in the small sacrifices of self
until nothing remains but an echo,
a ghost tethered to the earth by fear,
too afraid to walk into the light
and too tired to fight the shadows
that cling like a second skin.

And the world wonders:
Why didn't they leave?
But it's not the leaving
it's the unraveling.
Each thread of identity,
each step towards the door,
pulls against a gravity that speaks
in the quiet voice of terror:
You'll never make it out.
You're already gone.

Still, in the deepest night,
there's a flicker, a spark,
a refusal to be fully extinguished.
The insidious grasp weakens,
as the heartbeat that remains
remembers its strength,
knows that hands meant to hold
do not leave scars.

And someday,
a door will open.
The house will breathe again,
and the quiet will become
a sanctuary once more.

Strip the room bare, piece by piece,
watch the air expand into spaces once filled,
a vase, a chair, the clock that hummed silently,
gone. Now the walls throb with absence.

We've been taught to mourn the missing,
but the empty frame sharpens the portrait,
its lines more fierce, its colours more certain.

What remains throbs, louder now,
the weight of each remaining thing grows.
A book, once ignored, beckons.
Chairs seem taller, proud in their vacancy.

Holding the shape of those who sat
but are no longer sitting. The chessboard's grid,
no longer a decoration, asks for fingers,
begs for strategy, begs to matter.

Loss pulls at us, but what if it also clarifies?
We are creatures who forget to notice,
until the ground shifts and we see
not the void, but the survivors.

The gaps sing with an intensity,
that can only exist in the space of subtraction.
The fewer the notes, the more the music hums,
in the tight, trembling air.

In the emptiness, what remains isn't just what is left
it is louder, sharper, significant in ways
we were too crowded to feel before.
In loss, we gain a new vision, where what stays
demands our gaze and commands a deeper gravity.

What we lose in breadth, we gain in depth.
The light that falls on what is left
glows with the weight of what has gone.

It's okay if your skin feels electric,
if the walls shift like fractured mirrors,
and you stumble in the dark spaces of yourself.

It's okay if fear snarls at your feet,
if your heart drums too loud for quiet,
and the weight of everything presses
so hard you forget how to stand.

Let the storm rip through you.
Let it howl your doubts into the night.
These wounds are not final,
they are only birthmarks of a greater becoming.

It's okay.
Let the world bruise you.
Let the ache of it teach you
how to be soft where you've always been steel,
how to break where you've only been solid stone.

Feel the quake in your chest,
the shiver in your bones.
You are not fragile.
You are fire learning its own heat.

And when the darkness shifts
and you are left with your breath,
with the quiet after the storm,
you'll find,
you have always been more
than the breaking,
more than the fall.

It's okay.
The ground beneath you trembles
because you are rising.

Play, like breath igniting life,
wild animal in the ribcage,
a flame caught in the pull of night's dark thread
it whispers the ancient hum,
not the hush of apology but the loud echo of galaxies.

Skin, soft as dust against stars,
glows in the ecstatic tension,
stretching out in the reckless curves of time.

We fall into it, unlearn gravity,
become architects of chaos, of sweat and laughter,
our bodies - maps with no borders.

Play, because touch is language,
a conversation of pulse and instinct,
where rules shatter beneath a storm of hands
and the air forgets the burden of propriety.

It is a dance of forgetting ourselves
and becoming animals, children, gods,
twisting in a place where no wrong exists,
just the physics of limbs, the art of madness,
and the permission to be undone.

*** is Play.

A game where the end doesn't matter,
only the fire of the moment,
the breaking of worlds in a glance,
a kiss that isn't an apology.

Here, we are infinite in the ache,
and we laugh, in the way only lovers do,
as we fall again,
naked in the chaos of everything.

I hope you have the courage to begin anew,
To gather the fragments of heartache and hue,
And spin them into gold beneath your hands,
To create beauty from what life demands.

May you release the chains of what once was,
And find the present worthy just because.
With lessons etched deep into your soul,
May you surrender and trust in becoming whole.

I hope you dare to trust again, to feel,
To open wide, to let the wounds heal.
Overflowing with love, pure and bright,
May you find strength in every fight.

Let the past not hold your dreams in chains,
Nor the echo of doubt leave stubborn stains.
But choose to rise, to grow, to be,
Embracing all that life could see.

I hope you have the courage to take the leap,
To chase desires buried deep.
To believe in yourself, without delay,
And live in the fullness of today.

For endings are just chapters turned,
Where new beginnings are patiently earned.
Each door that closes leaves behind,
A key to strength, to a resilient mind.

Prioritise yourself in this world of haste,
Don't wait for saviors, don't let life waste.
For the hero you seek is within your core,
I hope you have the courage to ask for more.

And in trying, in falling, in rising once more,
May you find the courage to always explore.
For each step forward, each risk you take,
Is how the most beautiful beginnings awake.

I hope you find people in this life who make you feel like you are meant to be here...

Like roots tangled beneath concrete cities,
like hands that hold without words,
there are moments when the world splits open,
and you glimpse the sanctuary hidden in the chaos.

It's in the tilt of a smile,
in the pulse of laughter
that echoes in your bones
and says, "You were always meant to stay."

These are the people who carry your name
like a mantra on their tongues,
their presence a quiet rebellion
against the loneliness that creeps like fog.

They are the ones who make the sky more breathable,
who stitch together your ragged edges with nothing more
than a glance, a word, a touch of unspoken truth.

You belong here,
not because you bent yourself to fit their corners,
but because you filled the space only you could fill,
a constellation all your own,
and they saw it in you
long before you saw it in yourself.

I also hope you find this in yourself too...

There will be days when you look in the mirror
and all you see are fractures
shards of who you thought you should be,
the jagged pieces of an endless "almost."

But let me tell you:
even in the wreckage, you are whole.
Even in the broken light,
you are the brightest thing
the universe has ever known.

You don't need their validation to bloom,
but oh, how beautiful it is
when you find those who water your roots,
who whisper, "Stay,"
who remind you that the soil was always enough.

You are enough.
You belong,
exactly as you are.