I didn’t really know how bad it got, and usually I do.
I tend to keep to myself and stay in my room.
It didn’t look like that this time-
no, it slowly evolved.
There was no sudden switch with all of my body involved.

I don’t smile anymore while drinking my coffee,
and every day at 7:30 my mom asks what’s wrong with me.
I say nothing, that’s just my face,
and try to reassure her that my feelings she mistakes.

I sit with my family and join my daughter in pretend,
oddly, everyone treats me like I’m standing at the edge.

Until one morning my dad gives me a drink,
talks about renovation plans and asks what I think.
But I don’t care, and I don’t know why he’d ask.
He tells me he’s scared I’ll be like him,
and see life like an empty glass.

Which was weird, we never talk that deep-
but he noticed the change in me,
so I had to admit defeat.
I’m no actress, never been in a play,
but I thought I hid my sadness well-
that it wasn’t infecting my day by day.

But I’m a fool, so that’s really no surprise.
Now I really have to heal,
since it’s reached my family’s eyes.

When you loved me,
the world paused its rotation,
like even time
knew not to interrupt.
Everything else faded,
noise, doubt,
the version of me
before there was you.

You looked at me
like I was an oasis
in your endless desert.
Like your whole life
had led you here,
and now that you’d found me,
you could finally rest.

You didn’t love me gently.
You loved me like revelation.
Like touching me
meant risking everything,
but you’d already decided
I was worth the scars.

You saw in me
something untouched,
unguarded, and fragile.
A truth not curated,
not shaped by the world.
But the part of me
still soft,
still pure.

And instead of rushing toward it
to claim or change it,
you stood there,
stunned.
Like you didn’t know
whether to protect it
or fall to your knees in hunger.

You held me like I was made
of breath and glass,
something holy and fleeting.
You wanted to wrap your whole being around mine,
not just with desire,
but with devotion.

And still,
there was craving.
There was hunger.

The kind that doesn’t want to consume
to destroy,
but to understand.
To merge.
To belong.
To be lost in another.

And I…
I had never felt more real
than when I was against you.
Never more known
than in the way
you almost trembled
just to be near me.

That kind of love
needs forever
just to make sense of.
It arrives wild,
sets fire to everything you were,
and leaves you standing
in the ruins of unanswered questions.

And now,
no one says my name
with the weight
your voice gave it.
No one looks at me
like I’m both salvation
and temptation.

And maybe that’s a mercy.
Because what if…
I don’t miss you.
I miss being
unforgettable.

First love,

These words, unspoken and raw,

years pass, yet your shadow lingers,

etched into the sound of a worn vinyl record.

There is a place in our minds,

Where it plays in your living room,

Endlessly, since the night we fell.

I recall the verse of the song you played,

a fragile confession of why you are broken,

while you kept parts of yourself hidden,

guarding a truth that’s too painful to own.

That sacred moment,

a scar that whispers secrets,

too brittle to survive.



Now I wander through hallways of our past,

your green eyes,

piercing the hollow spaces of memory,

haunting me with the weight of what was lost.

The bitter burn of whiskey,

the residue of regret,

these remain,

reminders of the words you never spoke,

the ones I needed to heal.

the air starts to heal
and the stars start to listen
the tears on her face
no longer glisten

My sisters don’t answer their phones
if their boyfriends are asleep-
hardworking men with shifts in the morning
and reputations to keep.
Lunches to pack, clothes laid out neat,
and they do it all willingly,
from a place of love, how sweet.

I did these things too,
once, long ago.
I gave up my needs
for the good wife show.
But if it’s midnight and I want to speak-
I don’t give a **** if that man is asleep.

When’s he been gentle?
When’s he cared back?
I go to work too-
Where the hell is my slack?
A woman stays quiet to keep a man’s peace,
but is that really worth it
when a part of you dies piece by piece?

And one night, at two a.m.,
your daughter will grab your face
and say,
"I love you, Mom."
And even though she’s been up for hours,
and your room’s a mess,
and you’re behind on laundry,
and you haven’t had a moment to yourself,
and you’re riddled with anxiety over things that feel unfixable,
and she looks so much like her dad-
all the suffering and pain will melt away for a second,
and you can just be here, in this moment.

. (or: when I heard my voice come from his mouth) .

At first, it was flattery—
the way he wore his collar the same way I do,
the way he started lighting my brand of cigarettes,
the way his laugh hit the same register
I used to throw like a knife across rooms.

I caught him reading my journal once—
not with guilt, but reverence.
“I like the way your thoughts bleed,”
he said, closing the leather cover like scripture.

He stopped asking me questions.
He already knew the answers.

My shirts disappeared one by one.
Then my habits.
Then my silences.

I watched him pour bourbon
with the same three-count I perfected in 1994.
Watched him cross his legs just so,
quote my warnings back to me
as if they were lessons he taught himself.

He ****** me like a rehearsal.
And I let him—God help me—
because some part of me believed
that to be repeated is to be remembered.

But memory is a shallow grave.

One night,
he answered the phone with my cadence.

“This is he,” he said—
voice dry as an autumn branch.
And for a second,
even I believed him.

I didn’t confront him.
I just started talking less.

He filled the air like a flood.
My presence became parentheses.

In bed,
he started calling me old man—
not as a kink,
but as a countdown.

I smiled.
But it tasted like rust.

The boy I devoured
was digesting me back.

And prophecy, that silent ******,
licked its lips
and kept watching.