I fold my edges sharp and clean
A paper crane you’ve never seen
I glide through rooms
I speak in tune
I shine
I gleam
Your perfect moon
But the mirror cracks when I exhale
A breath too real
A breath too frail
Smoke and mirrors
That’s my skin
Love me untill I let you in
Then I’m the shadow
The ghost
The sin
Fractured skin
I can't win
I laugh in keys you’ll understand
I shape my world with careful hands
A chiseled smile
A painted hue
The me you love is never true
The paint peels back
It stains my nails
You see the colours that I kept veiled

I built you a bridge
With my bare hands
you torched it to ashes
Just to watch it stand
I gave you a map
You tossed it away
You cry for the road
But won’t walk today
I’ve seen this scene
I know the score
The same excuses
Scattered on the floor
Your story spins
A revolving door
You won’t pull through
So why should I do
what you refuse to?
Keep your hollow yells
And problems stacked like
Dominos that never fell
You beg for a lifeline
While you sink
I reach out my hand
You let it slip
I’m not your saviour
Nor your saint
I can’t carry all your weight
You’re the villain in your tale
And I won’t fix what you derail

I found a staircase carved into thunder
Each step a tooth pulled from sleeping beasts
The air tasted of copper
And half-remembered hymns
I climbed until my name fell off my shoulders
And rolled back into the darkness like a coin
Mirrors waited
Cracked and sighing with old weather
And when I reached for one
It bit my hand
A lantern swung from the jawbone of a tree
Older than remorse
Moths gathered like ash in my mouth
And taught me to speak
In vanished dialects
Even the silence had a pulse
I tried to pray once
But the sky folded its arms
Every word transformed into wolves
Who wouldn't approach me
The horizon was a wound stitched with lightning
Far below
Cities slept in the stomachs of drowned bells
Their windows flickering with dreams left unclaimed
I wanted to wake them
But my hands resembled rivers
And everything I touched forgot its shape
By dawn
I had grown antlers made of frost
And a mouth full of rain
The staircase ended in nothing
Except the sound of wings
Turning to glass

The oracles don't whisper to the living
They chant in vapour
In marrow
In echoes only heard when the self has softened
You must forget your shape
To bear their song
And become smoke to listen
I walked barefoot on salted glass
Between two moons, arguing softly
A crow watched me with seven eyes
And every blink re-wrote my spine
I asked for peace
It offered vision
I asked for answers
It offered mirrors too honest to survive
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They speak in rust
In moth wings
In teeth lost to grief
Their tongues run rivers underground
And you will drown before you understand
I saw a god blink once
And galaxies collapsed inward
Distracted, not cruel
The veil is not a curtain
But a membrane of remembering
I pressed my face through it
And came back less human
More true
The oracles wove their riddles
In the seams of my ribs
Now I hum when it rains
And dream in reverse
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They wait
And when your voice becomes dust
They will answer in wind and meaning
Not words or mercy
If you hear them
You are no longer asking
You are becoming what you once feared to know

I built a home in your silence
Hung hope like art in the dark
You watched me drown in your absence
Called it growth while you tore me apart
I begged with hands that bled for you
But you pulled away like I stained your skin
No love left to give
No breath to steal
You left me lit
Watched me peel
Made a ghost and blamed the flame
Now say my name as you feel shame
You carved me
Hollow
Wide
Deep
Then turned your back like pain comes cheap
You call that space?
I call it spit
Fed me fire I won't forget
No love left to give
No skin to save
You left me lit in your quiet grave
Made the mess and left me raw
I'm the scar you can't outdraw
Never flinched while I collapsed
Not a word as my hands unclasped
You left the match and watched me burn
Don't you dare pretend you hurt
No love left to fake
No grace to give
You left me lit
I learned to live
Not for you
Not for them
For the silence you condemned

I stand there waiting
Reheating the same thing I made yesterday
Cold center
Burnt edge
The world peels in soft strips
Same siren
Same neighbor arguing with the wind
Same breath caught in my teeth
This is what survival looks like
When it isn’t brave
Persistent
No fire
No grand unraveling
Just a flickering light I still haven’t replaced
And the knowledge that it will never be
The right time to change the bulb

Shallow end of a pond
Spinning slowly
Another body and I'm sorry
It's the most gut-wrenching
Sad
Raw
Depressing
Cliché
Cliché
Cliché
It's the most gut-wrenching time
Of the year
It's the blood in the air
Getting colder
And I've fallen
And I'm calling
It's the most gut-wrenching
Sad
Raw
Depressing
Cliché
Cliché
Cliché
It's the most gut-wrenching time
Of the year