I’ve left the oven on
for years.
Somewhere between metaphor and meaning,
something’s always been burning.

But no one’s eaten in a while.

They called it voice.
I called it
a slow confession wrapped in rhyme.
A sugarcoated breakdown.
Something easy to swallow
if you didn’t read too carefully.

They wanted brevity.
I brought blood.
They wanted truth.
I brought formatting errors
and a whisper shaped like static.

Do you remember the one
with the anti-light?
No?

Of course not.
You don’t remember the one who screamed last.
You remember the one who rhymed "heart" with "start"
and got 200 likes for it.

Now my name is on the box
but it’s spelled wrong
and the font is smiling too hard.

The cookies still crumble
but no one eats the edges.
That’s where the poison is.
That’s where I lived.

So I’ve folded the apron.
Swallowed the last word
before it could become a quote.

Let the gods of good taste keep their ovens.
Let the algorithm rot.

I’ve got shoeboxes full of unsent stanzas
and no more hunger
for applause shaped like echo.

i feel like im rotting from the inside. like all of the little aches are warning signs i will never take seriously yknow and then one day i will go to the doctor because the pain is unbearable and they will find that my body has rotted to the point its unsalvageable. and i will understand that this is why everyone avoided me. like, i will finally say yes this is it this is why everyone didnt like me as a kid. the same way you grab an orange and you can feel it rotting before you even taste it. the same way that the skin looks the same and the flesh would look the same but something inside you tells you it's wrong yknow. and you will sink your teeth into it only to find that its sour. and then its a betrayal. its a whole other thing, yknow, the fact the orange rotted. because not only did that orange dare be sour, but also it dared co exist with other sweet wonderful things. poison them. and then they have to throw away the whole batch because what if it rotted too. what if it spread the mold or rot or whatever it had. idk. i dont even like oranges.

i am not a poet,

nor am i a poem.

i am not a writer,

nor a book.

i am not a painter,

nor a painting.

i am not a sculptor,

nor a sculpture,

i  am not the artist,

nor the muse.

i am an idea,

that exists

only

in your imagination