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

What did it cost you
To feel nothing while I choked on
Everything you wouldn't say?
If pain was currency
I could buy you back in full
Hell,
I could buy a better ending
Where you don't just stand there
Like a bystander
To our wreckage

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

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

The air is too close
Thick
Wet
Pressing against my teeth
I jump

Once

Twice

Again

Harder

Harder

My knees crack
My spine bites itself
The world doesn’t move
Mud on my skin
Mud in my skin
Pulling me down
Pulling me in
Shadows lean forward
Like they know
Like they’ve been waiting
My breath isn't breath anymore
It's claws
Fists
Fire in a glass jar
And I’m breaking inside it
I jump

Again

Again

Again

One more jump
One more chance
The air thickens
My chest is glass due to shatter
And it hits me

I am not moving
I have never moved
I will never move

My head says
"Leave before the floor disappears
Before you wake up
With nothing but splinters
And a mouth full of questions
You already know the answer to"
My heart says
"Wait
He’s just tired
He’s just busy
He’s just trying to find the words"
Hasn’t he had enough time?
“I don’t know”
It’s a language you’ve
Decided to live in
While I’m translating
Myself into nothing
My spine folds in
My ribs start counting the days
Without you in them
I try to remember your voice
Without the hesitation
But all I hear is the pause before
“I don’t know”
I’m holding the door open for
Someone who can’t even
Look at the room
I’m swallowing glass
Calling it patience
And every piece cuts deeper
When I tell myself you’re worth it
My head says
"This isn’t love anymore
This is erosion
This is weathering yourself down
To fit a space that’s already empty"
My heart says
"No
Remember his hands
Remember the way he made the world Small enough to hold
Remember how you’d do it all again"
I think about next week
The way you’ll look at me
And say it again
And my chest will cave
And my eyes will sting
And maybe that’s the last time
Or maybe I’ll let it be another

"I don’t know"

"I don’t know"

"I don’t know"

And it’s killing me that
Neither do you

Ticking clocks paint the air with time
Zippers drag slow with a mellow chime
Graffiti walls whisper in neon hues
Skateboards cruise under psychedelic blues
Theremin cries like a ghost in the night
Squeaky floors sing in a flickering light
Dulcimers hum a kaleidoscopic trance
City bones shake with its cosmic dance
Dreams drip down in tie-dye streams
Stardust heavy like shattered beams
Baby scratches echo
The bass unfolds
The universe spins in colours untold
Moon winks as the streets come alive
Vibrations hum through technicoloured eyes
Broken tiles sing beneath our feet
Melodies thrive where chaos meets
Time slows down in this painted maze
Eyes wide open in a lucid haze
Clock hands melt feral and free
A symphony born in graffiti debris

This body is a rental with claw marks
I've worn it as a costume
A form of armour
A question I'm too tired to answer
They keep handing me mirrors
Like I'm supposed to say 'thank you'
But I know what lives beneath my ribs
A storm
A voice that never learned quiet
Some days
I move like this second hand skin
Wasn't stitched from other people's expectations
Other days
I send out smoke signals
From a war I didn't start
Still
I show up
Bruised
Blistered

We dress the wreckage
Hang fairy lights in the ruins
And call it ambiance
Throw words like 'Resilience' at bleeding walls
To feel like we survived on purpose
We stitch apologies on shirts we outgrew
Paint over scorch marks
With pastel hope
And act surprised when the fire
Still smells like us
We prop the broken door open
With books about healing and call it art
A metaphor
Anything but what it is
Grief in a new dress
Still dragging the same bones

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

The mushrooms in the forest
Know more about survival than me
They bloom in death
And wear it like velvet
I tried burying fear in the compost bin
It came back fragrant
Humming songs I hadn't written yet
There's glory in the stink of it
Mould carving frescoes in
Forgotten bread
Worms in the pit of the peach saying
"We were here first"
I think I love things more
Once they start falling apart
Makes them honest

I drink the night in drops so black
Tar drips down my splintered cracks
Lips that beg but never bite
For mercy’s hand
For one clean night
It settles in
Digs its claws
Whispers rot where voices pause
Drowning quiet in heavy dusk
It fills my marrow
Turns to rust
Solid shadows
Splintered bone
I’m breathing still
But not my own
Smoke curls sharp like serpent’s teeth
Echoes writhe beneath my grief
The air collapses
The pulse caves in
My lungs become a coffin's skin
It hardens deep
Nails me shut
No door to break
No light to cut
Only night
Only stone
Only death while I live alone

Confessions never seem to come
They hover bluntly in the throat
I think they're afraid
Of the rot
That grows in words unspoken
A quiet mold
Blooming behind the teeth
Between the maybe
And the nevermind

You think silence is mercy
But it has claws
And they dig in when the lights go out
I've waited for softness
That doesn't arrive
For a sentence with a full stop
Not just breathless withdrawal

The resentment simmers and curdles
Every memory turns to vinegar
In the gut
The sharpness turns inward
Every word a shiv I swallow
Like a storm in the mouth
Lethal even without the screaming
My pain delivered in whispers
Through a voice trained to stay quiet Until it splinters

And when it finally breaks
It won't sound like rage
It will sound like a crack in the drywall
Like something old slowly giving way
Obedience trained to carry grief
It seeps into the environment
Taught to flinch
To fold
To stay

The floor gave out
But I didn’t
I stood there with a mouthful of dust
Like it was air
Okay to choke
The walls peeled off their faces
Showing nothing but cracked bone
And hollowed out promises
I touched the silence
It burned like rust on open skin
No crash
No bang
Just the slow grind of everything
Falling apart quietly
Until even the debris forgets
It existed
I stayed to watch the mildew
Become a new kind of home

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 keep the flood in a teaspoon
Stir slow
Don’t spill
My throat learned how to
Knot itself into napkins
Folded
Unused
Beautiful
You blinked and the room dimmed
Just enough for me to
Pack the sun away
I speak in mist
Maybe
Never rain
Your name still fits
But only on the inside of my wrist
Where nobody looks
I walk lighter now
No grace
Just
Less of me left to carry
If I’m quiet enough you might
Stay
So I practice being nothing
Loudly

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

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

My past is a landfill with a halo on top
Saints made of bad decisions
Versions of me who didn't know better
But still swung first
I burned the blueprint
Then cried when the roof caved in
Everything is covered in soot
Yet I keep calling it a fresh start
Have you ever dressed a wound in glitter?
It doesn't work
But it photographs well

I bit the sun
And it tasted like tinfoil
Every shadow has eyes now
And they all blink out of sync
My name doesn’t fit right in my mouth
It writhes
Too many teeth
I watch the wallpaper breathe
And pretend it isn’t speaking
But it is
It always is
You said “calm down”
Like I wasn’t already holding the ceiling in place
With a splintered jaw and
A scream I forgot how to aim
I pour milk over static
Call it breakfast
Swallow whole days
The clocks tick sideways
The floor sighs
Everything feels staged
But no one gave me lines
I clap when the lights flicker
Just in case it’s the end
Or the beginning
Hard to tell
My hands aren’t mine anymore
They just follow the hum