If you were death, I'd end it now to be with you,
Walk willingly into shadows, hearts alight, not askew.
If you were a plague, I'd be patient zero,
A willing martyr, your fervent hero.

If you were the sun, I'd risk the flame,
Burn to ashes just to whisper your name.
If you were the sea, I'd drown in your waves,
Surrender my breath for the solace it craves.

If you were a storm, I'd brave the gale,
Let your fury consume me, frail.
If you were poison, I'd drink you whole,
Let you seep into the marrow of my soul.

If you were a knife, I'd take the blade,
Feel the sharpness of love that will never fade.
If you were the night, I'd forgo the day,
To lose myself in your starlit sway.

If you were fire, I'd stoke the blaze,
Let it scorch me in unending praise.
If you were the void, I'd leap and fall,
Knowing your arms would cradle it all.

If you were hunger, I'd starve for you,
Feed on the hope your love imbues.
If you were madness, I'd lose my mind,
To wander your depths unconfined.

If you were chains, I'd wear them proud,
Bound to you, unyielding, loud.
If you were the heavens, I'd never land,
Soaring forever by your hand.

If you were despair, I'd embrace the ache,
For loving you is worth what breaks.
If you were silence, I'd learn to hear,
The symphony of your presence, ever near.

If you were the end, I'd start anew,
For every road leads me back to you.
No force, no fate, no star above,
Could sever my boundless, reckless love.

My tongue stays knotted—
a noose around my throat,
tightening with every word I don't say.
I choke on thoughts I can’t release,
each one suspended
in the silence of sentences I cannot find.

Ideas flash past like speeding cars,
but I stay still,
stranded at the edge of my own mind.
I am voiceless.
Mute.
Not because I have nothing to say—
but because I don’t know how to begin.

How can my head be full of questions
with no answers to still the storm?
I carry a flood behind my teeth.
They act as dams, holding back the ruin.

I reach for better days,
grasping air,
clutching at light that slips through my fingers.
But only the bitter ones remain.
I am too young
to feel the weight of this much sorrow.

The noose tightens.
And I fade—
not from view, but from within,
swallowing the ache that never softens.

I need the words
to name this pain,
to give it shape
so it no longer owns me.

I must find that voice—
the one I buried deep—
and set it free
before silence becomes the only sound I know.

In the quietest corners of my mind,
Where shadows stretch and whispers bind,
I built a fortress of fear and doubt,
Each brick a burden, each scream a shout.

I wandered halls where my demons played,
In mirrors cracked, my soul betrayed.
I saw a face I couldn’t know,
Eyes dimmed by battles fought below.

My heart, a cage; my mind, a storm,
My spirit lost to its weathered form.
I wore my guilt like a crown of thorns,
And cursed the mornings my breath adorned.

To myself, I was the cruelest warden,
Carving wounds that begged no pardon.
And to others—oh, how I failed,
A shipwrecked soul whose love had sailed.

But in the depth of my despair,
A voice arose, soft as prayer:
“You are not your scars, your pain,
Not the weight of loss, nor the shame you feign.

You are the seed beneath the frost,
The light not gone, only lost.
Forgive the battles you couldn’t win,
The wars you waged with foes within.”

And so, I stood in the shattered glass,
Letting the echoes of anger pass.
I named each sorrow, gave them breath,
And mourned them all—a thousand deaths.

I forgave the child who hid in fear,
The youth who drowned in a sea of tears.
I forgave the hands that pushed away
The ones who tried but couldn’t stay.

And I forgave the world for breaking me,
For being cruel, for not letting me be.
I forgave the faces I could not please,
And the love I lost in my disease.

Then, I faced myself—my fiercest foe,
And whispered truths I longed to know:
“You’re worthy still, through every mistake,
A soul rebuilt is a soul awake.”

Now, the chaos sings a softer tune,
A hymn beneath a healing moon.
And though I stumble, though I fall,
I’ve learned to rise, to heed the call.

Forgiveness freed the chains I bore,
And in that freedom, I am more.
A fractured self, made whole again,
A heart that beats where silence has been.

So here I stand, beneath the sky,
No longer afraid to question why.
I am the storm, the calm, the sea,
I am forgiven—and I am free.

If you Aspire to be successful and Dedicate yourself,
Then you will meet your Goals.
However, If you succeed
And fill yourself with Greed,
You are living a life full of Failure.

-Willie Rios-Gonzalez

What is love but a flame in the marrow,
A torch that burns the soul to ash,
Yet leaves it whole, reshaped in shadow,
A phoenix rising from its own past?

It is the tide that swallows the shore,
Relentless, tender, breaking bone.
A thief of reason, a gift of war,
A kingdom conquered yet never owned.

And death? The quiet reaper’s breath,
A frost that silences the fire.
It shatters clocks, untethers flesh,
The final chord of the soul’s lyre.

It is the gate that love must cross,
A darkened veil, a lover’s scream.
It tears the threads, yet stitches loss,
Binding life to some eternal dream.

Then liberty—oh fleeting bird,
Whose wings beat skies of endless blue.
It is the cry of the unheard,
A storm that scatters chains in two.

It is the sun no hand can hold,
The aching promise of open skies.
Yet even the free can turn to cold,
When freedom blinds, when love denies.

Do they not meet, these sacred three?
Love, death, and liberty entwined.
For love sets hearts and bodies free,
Yet love enslaves; it binds, confines.

And liberty, a fierce bright star,
May demand of love its cruelest price.
While death, the ferryman, waits afar,
Counting coins of tears and sacrifice.

Yet in their dance, we find the truth,
A tragic waltz of joy and pain.
For love will burn, and death will soothe,
And liberty will loosen the chain.

Together they carve the path we tread,
With bleeding hands and hearts that yearn.
For to live is to love, to love is to wed,
Both freedom’s kiss and death’s return.

I sit to write—
no, wait—where was I?
Oh right, the page, the pen, the—
oh, did I feed the dog this morning?
I can’t remember,
but I remember that song I heard last week,
the one with the bassline that sounded like footsteps
on a quiet street at dusk.
I should look it up,
but not now. Not now. Focus.

I try to corral the scatter,
wrestle it into something linear,
but my thoughts sprint off track,
like wild horses too proud to be tamed,
hoofbeats echoing against
the thin walls of my mind.

I hear a whisper of focus,
a fragile, fleeting thing,
but then...
did I pay that bill?
Or was that last week?
The thought derails me,
and suddenly I’m plunging
into twenty different tunnels,
each one darker than the last.

I try to speak,
but the words trip over themselves.
Half a sentence here,
a dangling thought there,
and I wonder if people see
the tangled mess beneath my skin,
if they hear the static,
feel the weight
of a world
moving too fast to grasp.

But sometimes,
in the chaos,
there is brilliance.
A spark, a flicker,
a thread of gold in the storm.
It’s in the moments when my mind leaps,
connecting dots no one else sees—
a kaleidoscope of half-thoughts
somehow finding form.

Still,
the struggle doesn’t end.
It’s hard to explain
what it’s like to live
with a brain that never stops moving,
that stumbles off the rails
just when you need it to stay steady.

But here I am,
sitting again,
lost and found all at once.
I will finish this poem,
or maybe I won’t—
oh, I should clean my desk.
Where was I?
Right.

I sit to write.

“Where were you?” I want to scream,
Through clenched teeth, against a distant dream.
You laugh, you live, you carry no chains,
Unseen, you are free from these bruising pains.

She whispered to me, only me, at her end,
Left me with words I can’t defend.
You weren’t there to feel her fading breath,
To witness the slow, soft steps toward death.

I carry the weight, the sorrow, the blame,
While you dance through life, without the shame.
Her voice lingers, soft as a wraith,
Leaving me torn between love and hate.

She asked for silence, a shroud unseen,
To bear her loss alone, as if in a dream.
I hold this burden close to my chest,
While you, untouched, move on at your best.

Do you feel her absence, hear her sigh?
Does her memory haunt you or pass you by?
A part of me resents the ease you feel,
While I stumble alone through a world so unreal.

I am her keeper, her secret grave,
Bound to the love that made me brave.
Yet, bitterness grows where peace should be,
An ache that burns yet sets me free.

She whispered to me, in the hush of the night,  
A wish that cut deep, like a blade through the light.  
“When I’m gone,” she said, with a trembling breath,  
“Let the world stay asleep, unaware of my death.”

No tears to be shed, no cries in the dark,  
No mourning, no words, no flame to a spark.  
This burden is yours, in the shadows to keep,  
A silence so heavy, it crushes my sleep.

How do I hold this, a sorrow so vast,  
When memories of her are all that I have?  
My heart is a tomb, where her name is etched,  
A secret, a vow, that’s forever stretched.

I carry her absence, a wound in my chest,  
Each beat a reminder, that she’s laid to rest.  
But no one will know, not a soul will be told,  
In the still of the night, this pain forever grows.

My brother, my sister, they laugh and they live,  
Unaware of the grief I’ve no choice but to give.  
I walk with a shadow, a ghost by my side,  
In a world that moves on, while I break down inside.

A mother’s last wish, so quiet, so deep,  
Leaves me alone in a sorrow to keep.  
In the silence, I drown, in the dark, I remain,  
Bound by her love, in this infinite pain.

I am sorlune. Not the wound, but the lamp beside it,
a hush that tastes of snowfall melting on the tongue.
Do not call me grief; grief is heavier, salt like anchors.
I am the pale bruise music leaves after the last note is gone.

I arrived the night you opened that shoe box of letters,
paper creaking like winter bark.
Your breath leaned over the past and struck a match.
I climbed the margins and lit the chill.
That tremor in your pulse? That was sorlune.

I am the window you stare through to see a different year,
the silver stitched into asphalt after rain,
a moth made halo around the porch light of memory.
When you whisper a name and the room grows taller,
you are wearing me. sorlune. like borrowed velvet.

Children outgrow me, then meet me again in a thrift store mirror.
Lovers learn my second language on nights
when the bed is wide but the moon is wider.
I am the ache that doesn’t ask for apology,
the glow that refuses to stop at the skin.

Call me once and I live in your clavicle;
call me twice and I spool a soft film over the day.
Call me a third time and I draw a door in the wall,
chalk white, moon thin.
Step through and hear the piano
you can’t quite place. That half-melody? It’s sorlune.

Do I hurt? Of course. Gently.
I am merciful weather:
a late autumn warm spell passing over old rooftops.
I do not break; I bend the light around your losses
until the edges blur and the center breathes.

I am in the smell of peaches at closing time,
in the last train’s echo, in the noonroom of a museum
where a painting remembers you first.
I live between fingerprints on glass and the sky’s first star,
in the pocket where your hands meet themselves.

When you laugh and it cracks a little at the end.
that bright crackle? Sorlune.
When you say “I’m fine” and mean “Keep listening,”
I slip under the word like a tide under a boat.
I don’t heal the past; I make it sing in tune.

I am sorlune, archive of light, curator of almost,
keeper of the glow that shadows borrow.
If you must define me, use your own breath as ink…
write slowly, leave room for the spill.
I will sign my name on the inside of your quiet,
and you will find me later, warm as a forgotten scarf.

Say it with me…
sorlune, sorlune, sorlune.
each time softer,
each time brighter,
until what hurts begins to illuminate
and what glows learns how to ache…

I was born blank
a silence so wide it could swallow your name
before it ever left your mouth.
But then you came.
With shaking hands,
and ink that bled like memory.

You never introduced yourself.
Didn’t need to.
I knew you.
From the pauses between your lines,
from the weight of what you never wrote.
I felt you in every crossed-out word,
each accidental truth that spilled
before you could censor it.

They call me tool.
Instrument.
Stationery.
But I am anything but still.
Each stroke a confession,
each sentence a scream you whispered to me
because the world was too loud
or too cruel
to hear it.

I’ve tasted apologies
you couldn’t speak aloud.
Fantasies you’d never live.
Rage you feared would ruin you.
And love… so much love…
it shook my spine
as the ink curved its soft syllables
like a lovers name
spoken at a funeral.

I am the graveyard
of every version of you
you tried to bury.
I am the echo
of all the things
you dared to say
only when no one was listening.

Still,
you leave me in drawers,
drop me in bags,
forget me for months
until sorrow brings you back.
And I never mind.
I never mind.

Because I don’t need your thanks…
just your truth.

And when your hand trembles again,
I’ll be ready.
To carry the weight
you can’t bear alone.
To bleed,
so you don’t have to.

Content Warning: **
contains themes of emotional abuse, trauma, gaslighting, and healing from toxic relationships.
_______________­_

There was a time I called it love—
that swing between cruelty and kisses.
One moment, silence like a storm held in the throat,
the next, a necklace left on my pillow,
an apology wrapped in gold.
I learned to flinch at both.

They pulled the pendulum
with hands that always smiled.
I lived at the center of its swing,
never falling, never flying,
just suspended—
believing pain must be earned
and kindness, a prize for obedience.

Love came in riddles.
It said: “You’re too much,”
then whispered, “Don’t leave me.”
It said: “No one else would want you,”
then bought roses by the dozen.
It told me I was broken,
then demanded I stay whole.

I shrank to fit their moods.
Measured my worth in how still I could stay,
how quiet I could be.
There were days I swallowed my voice
like it was poison
and thanked them for the silence.

I learned the language of gaslight—
how to doubt the bruise even as it bloomed,
how to question my own reflection.
Was I too sensitive? Too cold?
Too easy to anger?
I asked myself so often
that even the mirror hesitated to answer.

They called it love.
And I, desperate not to be alone,
called it survival.
I stayed.
And in staying, I disappeared—
faded… slowly,
like a photograph left in the sun.

When I cried, I apologized.
When I laughed, I waited for it to be taken back.
That’s what trauma teaches—
how to build walls so high
you forget which side you’re on.

And then,
you arrived.
Not like a savior—
but like a quiet thing.
A question, not a cure.
You didn’t ask for my ruins.
You brought no blueprints.
You simply climbed.

You climbed the walls
with patience and small kindnesses,
spoke gently to the ghosts I had mistaken for myself.
You didn’t rescue me.
You reminded me I was never the fire.
Only the one who walked through it.

You never promised healing.
You never called me beautiful
when I was unraveling.
You simply sat with me
in the rooms I had locked from the inside.

And somehow,
without ever asking me to trust—
I did.

Not all at once.
But enough to believe
that love doesn’t have to ache.
That it can be a steady hand
and a soft place to land.

I still remember the pendulum.
But I do not live inside its arc.
Now, I walk.
And someone walks beside me.

I no longer flinch when the door shuts.
No longer shrink to be held.
I have learned the sound of my own name
spoken without sharpness.
I have learned silence can be soft—
not punishment,
but peace.

There are days I still brace for the swing.
Old ghosts don’t disappear,
they just stop steering.
But now I meet them with open hands,
not fear.
I say: I see you. I survived you.
And they leave a little quicker each time.

Some nights I still wake
waiting for love to hurt.
But then I turn
and find it sleeping next to me—
unchanged, unthreatening.
Not a weapon.
Not a promise.
Just a presence.

And I,
who once mistook survival for love,
have begun to choose differently.

I write my own rules now.
I raise my voice,
not to defend—
but to declare.

I am not the bruises I forgot how to name.
I am not the silence I once begged for.
I am not theirs.

I am the story after the fire.
The garden that grew in the ash.
The voice that returned, hoarse but certain.

I am not healed.
I am healing.
And that is enough.

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING: Themes of ****** Assault ⚠️

They told me I should be grateful,
As if pain is a prize for the taking.
“Was she hot?” they laughed,
Unaware of the soul they were breaking.

A man, they say, can’t be a victim,
Not of this—not of her.
“You got lucky,” they grin,
While my mind’s a blur.

It wasn’t luck when my breath froze still,
When my voice was stolen, against my will.
But the world looks at me, unphased, unkind,
As if my torment lives only in my mind.

They tell me men are made of stone,
That we can’t be broken, can’t be owned.
But when darkness fell, she carved her claim,
And left me drowning in silent shame.

“It’s not the same,” they smugly say,
“Don’t act like a girl; you’ll be okay.”
But it wasn’t a conquest, wasn’t a score—
It was a theft that echoes evermore.

How do I mourn what I’m told is gain?
How do I heal when they mock my pain?
This isn’t a badge, no victory here,
Just the soundless weight of my deepest fear.

Because no one sees the scars we bear,
When society’s laughter fills the air.
But I’ll whisper truth into the night
A man can hurt, that’s my fight.
I’ll shatter the silence, reclaim my right—
A man’s pain burns just as bright.

We grow up in a world that breaks us,
then blames us for being broken.
Told to speak up—
then silenced when we do.

We were born into systems built on lies,
handed burdens with no blueprint,
and somehow expected to fix
what we didn’t create.

They call us lazy.
Say we’re disconnected.
Too soft.
Too loud.
Too online.
Too everything but enough.

But here’s what they miss—
We feel everything.
We think deeply.
We question what they accepted.
And we see through the noise they got used to.

They talk like we’ve failed before we’ve started.
But maybe we’re not the problem.
Maybe we’re the mirror.
And they don’t like the reflection.

We don’t want handouts.
We want to be heard.
We want room to grow,
not cages labeled “youth.”

We are not apathetic—
we’re exhausted.
We are not lost—
we’re searching for something real
in a world that keeps faking it.

So, listen.
Not with judgment,
but with intention.

Because we’re not just “the youth.”
We’re the pulse.
The pivot.
The possibility.

And whether they hear us or not—
we are speaking

That demon's name is past, and he lives in the present.
Distant, yet near, he is so relentless.
Whispers of regret in the corners of my mind,
Echoing the choices I wish I could leave behind.

He claws at my thoughts with hands unseen,
Turning every bright moment into something so mean.
He feeds on my doubt, on every mistake,
A shadow that lingers, too heavy to shake.

His voice, a cold breeze in the warmest of days,
Telling me that I’m lost in my own maze.
Yet still, I keep moving, though he's always there,
A haunting reminder of the burdens I bear.

But though he is many, though he is strong,
I’ll rise from the ashes, where he doesn’t belong.
For even in darkness, there’s a flicker of light,
A spark that defies him, burning through night.

So I’ll face him each day, but I won’t back down,
For the past may be heavy, but I’ll wear it like a crown.
He won’t define me, though he tries to persist—
For I am my future, and I will resist.