Dazzled, bewitched, betwixt
Your attention is clearly affixed
To  fantasy, a dream--a non-reality
This sad thing you see as me

But, I love you as you are
Although, your dreams take you far
Away into the distance
Illusion believed as instance

Beauty decried by the blind
Have regard for those left behind-
Sight intoxicating
Left waiting,

And wanting; more


It's just a door!
But, you adore

A projection
Of a reflection

Of what you can't keep inside
The elephant you cannot hide


But, it's just a door!
A portal into possibility
You're wanting more
And never question what you seek

In this hallway
there are many doors
It's easy to run away
And simply choose one that is 'ours'

But, we must question our periphery
Understand not all is what we see
We must find Love internally
Before professing it eternally;
"To truly love another--first, I must love me"

Every day, I open my reality:
I wake up.
I feel.
I choose.
I decide—
knowing so many others
are crying behind the scenes,
and their trembling is raw.

Pain isn’t consolation—
it reinforces the structure of fragility
when the towers are crumbling.

At the core, we return,
squeezing black-and-white struggles
into our veins, into our memories.

To the only home
we never left
our own body.
The first and the last.

I could've just laid down if
I wanted to

ignoring the bells that echoes
inside my head

Let the earth swallow me
among withered leaves that decay
beside me

Let the world dry out
as if all lamented things
belong to me

I could act as if
my heart is an icy winter water,
never to beat, never to warm at all

Granite skies would drift above me,
haunting me in my night and
summer days

But in the thunder that frightens me
A swift lightning would pass me by,
a crack of gold in my darkest night

The flood crashing through doors,
through all the breathe that I've lost
I would learn to hold every air that I touch

All the celestial mass throbbing in my chest
The distant rumble of supernovas
that tears me apart,
and black sunshine that shines on my face

Even if midnight splatters beneath my eyes,
with all the stars that glimmer
that badly wants to fall

Even if half of my shadow is blown to nether
I would suffer everyday, and in my pain
I knew I could feel

I would die everyday, with all lamented things
and in all my deaths

I have learned to live

I opened my mouth to speak,
but the words came out smoke
a fire I’d fed with dreams too flammable to hold.
They said, write your future,
but handed me a pen that bled doubt.
And here I am,
not out of ink,
but drowning in all the things
I was too alive to say
and too tired to dream again.

And thats how your prose poetry bled into my cup of stone
Like fine wine aged but made you grow blue

You speak like a forest
that remembers the flame.
The kind of silence you carry
is not quiet
it’s the hush before a storm
that forgot how to rain.

They fed you dreams like sugar,
wrapped in sunlight and soft songs.
Told you the sky was yours
if only you’d grow wings.
But no one said
how heavy it is to fly
with roots still buried in cracked earth.

Now, the soil aches.
The trees hum of ghosts.
You walk through orchards
where no fruit hangs
only scorched branches
and the echo of “almost.”

But listen.

Even ash is a kind of promise.
Even the blackened bark
knows how to bloom again.

You are not lost
you are fermenting,
deep in the unseen.
A season of decay
before the spring.

Let the crows circle.
Let the stars go dim.
Even moons must rest
before they rise full again.

You are not done.
You are gathering.
What feels like an end
is only the soil
learning your name.

**
Name you free, teach you in glassed cage
Still Ashes Rise Again

By: Zoulaikha

How to navigate the planet
And where the planet is
To use the correct verbiage
And how to raise your kids
How to cook the food you eat
And to talk to your friends
To formulate your stance
and execute your ends
Instruction
On the way to feel
About the coming
Amalgamation
To assimilate
For the greater good
Or live in isolation.