I wore my heart like heavy armor,
Fighting shadows, none of them true.
Quixotic in my relentless fervor,
A soldier lost in skies of blue.

It’s the tranquility
I longed to be drowned in,
Even if I suffocate,
I’d know it leapt from what I’d become—
A monster to myself.

Even if I drown in desolation,
There’s still life in the stillness,
The quiet joy in my plea,
A glimpse of what I could have been,
If only I had not been my own monster.

But even monsters can unlearn,
Can find grace in their scars,
So I'll rise from the silence,
With whispers of who I’ll become.

The storm and the calm
In the depths of your mind, emotions collide,
A sea of thoughts, nowhere to hide.
You feel with a fire, burning so bright,
A heart full of dreams that take flight at night.

You walk through the world like a poem in the rain,
With a soul that’s both gentle and full of pain.
Lost in the moments that only you see,
A dreamer, a thinker, a heart full of plea.

You stare at the stars with questions untold,
Hoping one day, your story unfolds.
A smile hides the storm you can't control,
But still, you move forward, heart and soul.

You hold on to hope, though it feels like a chase,
In a world that moves fast, you set your own pace.
With every glance, with every thought,
You write a new chapter, lessons hard-fought.

You are the storm and the calm in between,
A story unwritten, yet clearly seen.
And though you may wonder where this road bends,
Remember, it’s you who gets to write the end.

Stone lion mourns deep,
etched in grief, yet standing proud,
bravery carved wide.
A lion falls, yet duty stays,
Carved in stone, his honor sways.
For king and cause, they stood, they died,
Their silent valor, petrified.

I wandered through a house of glass—
Where echoes lined the walls—
And every sigh was catalogued
In airless, silent halls—

A ribbon—folded into dusk—
A letter—laced with dust—
A ring—unfastened from a hand—
A vow—reduced to rust—

The floorboards hummed of footsteps hushed—
Of names—no lips would call—
And shadows, draped in tattered lace,
Danced soundless through the hall—

I placed my heart upon a shelf—
Beside a wilted rose—
And watched the evening take its leave—
Where love—unburied—goes.

Not the butterfly—
never the butterfly.

Only the delirium.
The fever of pursuit.
Wind-lashed laughter,
sun slitting gold across our skin,
hands slicing through hush,
through emerald ghosts.

Wings—silk, smoke,
breath—a ghost kiss,
vanishing.

We ran.
We ran.
Color hemorrhaged between our hands.
The sky swallowed it whole,
left nothing but,
the aftertaste of wanting.

Was it ever the capture?
Or the almost,
the ache of flight just out of reach—
like trying to pocket a mirage,
like teaching the wind to stay.

Years fold.
Silence swallows.
Love like wings,
dreams like dust,
fingers still cupped around air,
as if emptiness could be held.

We chase.
We lose.
We call it living.

Every day at three—
the little prince arrives,
cawing his prophecy at the door,
voice worn with quiet hunger.

He calls me out—
out of silence,
out of whatever grief I’ve tucked away.

If I do not answer—
he circles,
cawing until I stand before him—
palms cracked open,
giving what I can to feed his hunger.

He knew the weight of my hands
before I did.

What arrogance—
to believe I am the keeper.

Perhaps it is him—
who feeds me—
the voice in the throat of the world,
reminding me—
even the unloved must answer when named.

The hour always comes.

They raised a cathedral for hesitation’s specters,
a mausoleum where half-lived fates fester beneath glass,
each relic a carcass of fractured intent.

Here, a breath lingers in crystal—
a stillborn confession, lips parted, words calcified mid-escape.
Beside it, a rusted key entombed in velvet,
a relic of an unbreached threshold,
a house collapsing under the silence of absent footsteps.

In the west wing, violins lie gutted,
their spines snapped mid-requiem,
melodies strangled before they ever touched air.
Across the hall, a wedding gown—pristine, untouched,
its silk sodden with the ghost of a name
almost taken, then discarded
like an unclaimed prophecy.

The curator drifts through corridors of regret,
brushing dust from the obituaries of roads never walked,
straightening the portraits of lovers who almost stayed,
of letters that withered in trembling hands,
then were entombed in the graveyard of never sent.
The air itself swells with the dirges of forsaken dreams,
whispering in the tongue of the undone,
suffocating in the thick rot of inertia.

And at the hall’s end—a mirror.
No plaque, no inscription, no mercy.
Just your own reflection staring back,
begging you to walk out before you, too,
become part of the collection.

Will you leave, or will you be archived next?

They spoke my name in tongues of dawn,
before the world was cast in hues—
before the red could kiss the rose,
before the sky first bruised to blue.

I was the shimmer ‘twixt the stars,
the breath between the night and morn,
a hush of light not seen nor mourned,
a ghost where spectrums are stillborn.

The prisms wept, but left me void—
a sigh unbent by mortal sight,
a whisper lost to time’s embrace,
unwoven from the loom of light.

Yet once, I danced on dreaming lids,
in eyes that dared to look beyond,
but now—I pale, unseen, unknown,
a phantom shade, a severed bond.

So tell me, when your colors fade,
when all grows dim, and light departs,
will you recall the one who lingers—
the color buried in your heart?

Fingers—
laced in glow spill, dusk-slick.
tiny suns,
trembling—bodies of light,
trapped.

pulse-thrum,
hush-black air—
soft hymns flickering,
pleas pressed to glass,
breath-fogged, burning.

whispered tomorrow—
honey-thick, guilt-laden,
beauty begged to be held.

dawn—
bled dry.
cold palms, hollowed vessel,
absence like ruin.

I lied to the glass.
worse—
I stole their dying light.

& now—
I bear their afterglow
like a wound that refuses to dim.

Bare feet kissing marble’s chill,
fingertips tracing teak and dusk,
air thick as mulled velvet—
honeyed, heavy, slow.

She moves where silence frays,
light spills like sugared wine,
breath lingers like an unshed sigh—
never still, never caught.

Fluorescence hiccups across her skin,
pavement inhales her weight,
a flicker, a glitch, a sliver of absence—
half-held, half-gone.

She dances where gravity forgets,
shadows soften like overripe fruit,
laughter drips slow as melting wax—
feral, fleeting, free.

She is not waiting to be found—
she is, and that is enough.

The door was slightly ajar,
her scent lingered in the air,
but when I stepped inside,
she was no longer there.

Beneath the skin of the world,
there are names no lips have touched in centuries.
They linger in the mouths of ghosts,
curl in the spaces between prayers.
What do we call the ones
who have outlived even memory?
Perhaps nothing.
Perhaps that is the final death.

Skated where lilies bent,
pavement murmured in argent hush,
wind unspooled within my ribs—
a hymn of flight, untethered, fierce,
spun in the silk of speed.

Wheels were never meant for girls—
that flight was fleeting, never owned.

They said—stride rewritten, dream revoked.
But air had named me, traced my pulse
in gold-lit veins of motion, feral-free.

Children watched—wide constellations,
irises pooled in astonishment,
mirroring something too bright to tether.
One step from a flag-bound fate,
from slicing dusk on weightless wheels.

Then—lockdown. World wrenched mid-spin,
skates unstrung, silence thick.
Wings collapsed to dust and dusk,
a promise left in winter’s throat.

Yet speed still lingers in my bones,
wind—ghost-thin, whispering back.
One step, and muscle will remember,
rhythm rekindle in marrow and motion.

I dream of dusk-warmed pavement,
of twilight spooling across my wrists,
of exile ending where flight begins—
of weightless light, of love, of grace.

One day, I’ll wake. I’ll step outside,
where echoes gather, where silence hums,
and whisper softly to the wind—
“Teach me how to wear my wings again.”

But dreams have gravity,
and promises are heavy things.

Still—one day, perhaps, I will.

cat — or the echo
of some old philosopher
dreaming through small lungs.

Summer began soft—
honeymilk pooled through mango leaves,
pigeons feather-heavy on telephone wires—
the whole world gold—
still ripening—
like something that didn't know how to end.

I remember the river—
thin-*****, sun-fed—
wearing the sky like a borrowed veil—
bruised lavender by dusk,
silver-stitched by midnight.

We were half-salted, half-feral—
knees green-stained,
pockets lined with papaya seeds,
believing if we never named the days
they could never leave us.

Evenings folded in hibiscus hush
mothers calling from verandahs
their voices trailing jasmine heat
but we stayed
bloom-fed—
learning how silence could taste like belonging.

There was a boy
wild-haired, sugar-grinned
who carved his name into the gulmohar—
said it was the only way
to outlive summer.

I never carved mine.
I wanted to belong to something
without leaving a scar.

The river kept what we couldn't—
pocket marbles clouded with spit,
cicada shells,
prayers hushed into cupped palms—
half-wishing, half-forgetting.

When the rains came—
soft at first—
then harder—
we waded knee-deep through the swell,
our laughter thin as dragonfly wings—
something breaking beneath it.

But rivers don't keep secrets.
They carry them.

By August—
the gulmohar stood stripped—
his name unstitched—
washed down to sea.

By September—
the river forgot itself—
spitting up broken dolls,
rusted bicycle chains—
whole summers gutted in the mud.

By October—
we learned
the world is only ever borrowed.

I wonder if the boy remembers
if his name still flickers beneath the water
stitched somewhere too deep to touch.

I never carved mine—
but if you pressed your ear to the current
if you listened long enough—
I swear you'd still hear me,
a salt-thin breath
folded beneath the hush.

Lilac hush —
earth, half-waking,
baroque birdsong.

Moss curls ,
dew beads on nettle’s tongue —
small, glassy prayers.

wind —
silk-handed seamstress —
stitches light into every leaf,
veiling the world — breath and bloom.

Bones of old trees cradle the sun’s milk,
wildflowers nestle in their ribs —
what dies here, lives softer.

river, translucent and slow,
spills silver veins , the skin of the valley —
a quiet pulse beneath the green.

Somewhere between sky and soil,
we become the silence —
lungs folding into pollen-laden air,
fingertips brushing the hem of forever.

Nothing belongs.
Nothing is apart.

In the meantime,
the world remakes itself —
petal by petal, wing by wing —
and we, fragile passengers,
are simply learning how to listen.

Fruits unmoored from origin,
spectral and pendulous,
suspended in the hush of an unclaimed offering.
Ambrosial weight presses against an open palm,
a phantom indulgence—
unheld, untouched, unfed.

Nectar unravels—
though no flesh was sundered,
no blade traced its weeping hymn,
no tongue ever nursed its ruin.

I weep as often as I laugh
not from sorrow, nor from joy,
but because the world hums,
and I refuse to be deaf to it.

Wind-carved
spine twisted—feral, gnarled.
A body bent,
splintered—never severed.

Salt licked wounds raw. Brine sutured marrow.
Bark flayed to ribbons, limbs ink-blurred—
curling, unwritten. A thing undone, a thing refusing.

Roots plunged—teeth to brittle earth,
ribs against collapse.
Cliff crumbling, gravity unspooling—
but it held.

White-knuckled in ruin.
Fingers clawing the wind.
Wreckage. Crooked. Unnatural.

An old man exhaled— Survival isn’t always beautiful.

But what is beauty, if not this—
a body unmade, carved by violence,
and still, somehow, bloom?

Morning unfurls—
thin gold draped over the terrace rim,
the world still dream-fed, undecided.

She moves through it—
wild-crowned in bramble and gold,
a flower skewed in her hair—
stem fractured, wind-touched
but worn as if it could never be
anything less than perfect.

Something in her
the way her chin tilts to the sky,
the way sunlight spills across
the same high cheekbones,
the same quiet brow—
pulls at something nameless
beneath my ribs,
a longing too tender to name.

Her laughter
windstruck — a ripple in the skin of dawn,
spins loose, untethered,
a sound without edges,
without destination—
just the raw, impossible ache
of something alive
for no other reason
than because.

The air folds around her
soft, golden-bellied
as if the whole world
was holding its own
watching, waiting—
for a beauty
too wild to know itself.

I watch too,
not out of wonder,
but out of fear—
that something so fleeting
could slip through this hour
without ever being written down.

She will grow
the flower will fall,
the wind will learn her name,
and the sky will no longer
be enough to hold her.

But for now,
she blooms only for the sun,
for the hush,
for the wild, unmeasured ache
of simply being.

And I swear—
if I could stretch this hour
into forever,
I would—
just to watch her run
one breath longer.

Some joys bloom for nothing—
not for the gaze, not for the name—
but simply because the sun is warm,
simply because they can.

I did not smile at her.
I smiled at the hush—
the unbearable miracle
of something wild
that does not know
it is precious.

The hush lingers,
the morning folds—
soft gold cradling a face
that no longer lifts toward the sun.

The air no longer waits.
Only I do.

And beneath my fingertips,
the photo trembles—
thin, timeworn—
edges curled like petals,
as if the years have tried
to fold her back into a bloom.

now, in this hush,
I turn to her—
and I smile.

She was my mother.
She was a girl once,
unwritten.

And I—
I have spent my whole life
trying to read her.

Child,
who told you to carve shelter
into cracked bones,
to scatter your name
like fleeting petals in a storm,
to call what bites,
what burns—yours?

People—
illusions,
water slipping through the hands of time,
goldleaf peeling from statues,
mirages flickering out of reach.

But you—
obsidian,
forged in fire,
a constellation unraveling in defiance,
the ghost of something ancient,
unforgiving.

You are not held.
You are not lost.
You are the fire,
the tempest,
the truth that will not yield.

What lingers in you—
is eternity.