It’s getting louder in the silence
And even harder to breathe,
My heart wretches with a hunger
And I’m desperate to feed.

It should have been so easy,
Growing life from a seed,
Watching you grow where I could never follow
Has taken its toll.

Scars are etched upon my soul,
Lesions pressed against the brain,
I don’t even dream any more,
The day they took you from me
Was the day everything changed.

It feels like I’m lost at sea,
Floating on wishful hope
And tree bark memory,
As the pine sticks through my flesh
Back riddled with all their blades
I’m bled out to feel these sharks
Of my doubts encircle me.

What could have been,
Had I known then,
How to be a better man,
Instead I—
Feel the weight of burden
Anchor me to this boulder
Where carrion comes to pick me clean.

It’s getting louder in the silence
Desperation in the form of a plead
Seethed through every exhale
When it’s the loss of you I breathe.

Lost like a poltergeist in purgatory
Shuffling in this flesh husk like a zombie,
Loveless, I can’t , feel you
Loveless, I can’t , feel anything at all.

It should have been me,
And I want you to know,
If I could trade places,
I’d rot in the earth,
Faded like paper pulp after the rain,
Scatter my ashes into the sea,
And watch as the sharks of my doubts
Encircle me.

i follow pain everywhere she wants to take me
she reveals a cosmos in a tear,
the layers of time kept together by the vitality of light.
silences rest in between our dreams
the clouds are enough for the wind
branches enough for the birds
love is holding its antonyms with gentleness
i follow pain into the camera obscura of hope
wars are trapped in the flash of words without flesh.
the lament in the loops of time, so much

Bad day
Bad week
Bad month
Bad year
Bad…life?

Suffocating silence

Lonely
I am alone

They are there-
But they don’t even know

The weight of the world on my shoulders

Is it just me?

It can’t just be me…

Everyone else sleeps.
The world goes still.
And for once, I can breath.
No noice.
No questions.
No expectations.
Just me, and the soft hum of the world that finally stopped shouting.

I don’t want to sleep.  
And I can’t, anyway.

My thoughts are too loud,
My body too wired,
Like I was made for the hours everyone else forgets.

Daylight feels wrong, too bright, too demanding.
But night wraps around me like a blanket I actually want to wear.
This is when I come alive.
When silence isn’t empty but safe.

I scroll through nothing, lie in bed with my eyes wide open, and tell myself I’ll sleep soon.
But I never do.

I’ve finically stopped fighting it, this strange rhythm, this life between midnight and 5 a.m.
I think I was made for it.
For the stillness,
For the quiet company of my own thoughts,
For being alone but not lonely.

Let them have the day.
I’ll keep the night.

You don’t have to rise like the sun each day—
some mornings, it's enough just to open your eyes,
to sit with the silence,
to feel your heartbeat and whisper, “I’m still here.”

You are not the storm that passed,
nor the ruins it left behind.
You are the seed under the soil,
waiting for the right rain,
the quiet miracle of a soul not giving up.

Let no one shame the pace of your healing.
Let no voice drown out the hush of your trying.
Because surviving is not small.
And breathing, on hard days,
is a kind of bravery the world forgets to praise.

So rest, dreamer.
You don’t need to shine tonight.
You just need to stay—
soft, alive,
and wildly worthy of tomorrow.

I told the stars to shut up.
They weren’t witnesses. They were worse.
They kept spelling your name,
blinking slow, like pity,
glinting gallant-
like that ever saved anyone.

I walked past the summer we called ours
like I wasn’t still stalking it.
Like I didn’t prowl on purpose,
like I didn’t rehearse your alibi,
like I didn’t pray
(for prey.)

I was fine with the trees, the oil stains,
the way the sun pretended nothing happened.
I could go days without hearing an ice cream truck,
or seeing a sun-burnt stranger
and thinking: maybe the universe
rerouted you into someone
I could almost survive.

You once said I was dangerous.
And by once I mean
I wrote it down
and heard it forever.
It’s in my lymph nodes,
in the poems you pretend not to read.
It’s in the version of me
you kept almost loving
but never quite chose.

You called us perilous.
Or maybe I did.
It’s hard to tell, since
I’ve been writing you
with your mouth shut
for months.

I keep checking the margins
for your voice.
All I got were
the noises people make
when they’re trying not to drown,
but pretending to wave.

Why is your name still more siren
than sentence?
Still more blood than bruise?
I made your absence
a body I slept beside,
because I kept waking up
guilty.

I never served,
but I wrote the ending.
Put my hand on a Bible,
bit my tongue so hard
the truth still tastes like you.
Wore borrowed pearls,
and swore to God
I never loved you more
than the day you didn’t show up.

I would’ve done time for you.
I would’ve confessed to a crime
that didn’t exist
just to hold your hand once
on the courthouse steps.

You said I was dangerous.
You were right.
But not in the way you thought.
I told the whole truth-
just not out loud.

You didn’t get convicted.
But I still can’t go back
to that summer
without thinking the tan lines
were warning signs,
without getting subpoenaed
by the sky.

Some nights,
your name still tries to get in
like a burglar.
I play dead,
tell the stars to shut up.
But they unlock the window anyway.
They spell you out in light
like they want me to remember
how it felt
to be the crime scene.

Send me your kisses by letter,
I'll place them under the moon,
in the reflection of your eyes.

I'll savor them in every bite,
as if I were eating from your mouth.

But give them to me wherever I am,
whether on earth or in heaven,
wherever we are,
wherever we are.

The train hums like a memory
soft and slow through time—
a moment caught between gazing days
we lost, and hope we move forward.

Scenes flicker through the windowpane—
a mother’s wave, a lover’s stare
a strangers stealing glances
but never the courage to speak.

We travel fast, yet feel so still
in silence, we are seen—
as glances bloom like fragile love
in places we have been.

And maybe time is not a line
but tracks we ride again—
The train moves on
your soul intact, your past in every pane
each stop a reminder, each start a chance
to feel, to fall, to mend.
And every stop—
a chance to choose
To lose or love again.


Erennwrites