I've come to the realization
There will be more pain in my future.
I will be running into more hurt
Just when I wonder if I've endured
All that is to be expected.
There so much struggle
That I can't begin to imagine.
I will find myself out of breath again soon enough.
My bones.. my heart will break again
And I'll never be ready for that.
No matter how many times
I so gingerly mend myself back together.

You told me once
How you tried your hardest
Not to fall in love with me.

You found out
It was the easiest thing
You've ever done.

Loving myself
Well...
....that's the hardest thing I've ever done.

I gave everything to someone I truly loved.
That I believed in a future with.

A woman that I thought was perfect for me.
I felt I lost everything when I lost her..

I'm much too scared to reach out to her.
Scared anything I say

Will only be used
To cut me down.

Every time I think of someone
I think of them dancing.
I think of us dancing together.
And with each one they have their own dance.

I can imagine their excitement,
Their sweet laughter
And how much they are just living
The moment.

If only I knew how to dance
I wouldn't be forced to imagine
What it would be like to see them smile.
If I knew how I would dance all night.

It could very well be
The amount of pain I'm in
Tonight.

The shortness of breath..
Struggling to swallow
One more gulp of air.

The flush red complexion
Hinting across my face, chest, and shoulders.
The years of erosion in my eyes.

I see all of this in my reflection,
And yet..
..For a fragmentary moment..

I caught the glimpse of someone I aspire to be.

I've learned never to give my heart away
So easily.

I don't really know
If I ever will again.

Love is nothing more
Than a myth to me.

So is Happiness...

I say this not with joy,
Nor satifaction.

My tears are no longer worth spilling
For anybody else.

They do not whisper.
They arrive with sound—
a cataclysmic brass section in the cathedral of my skull,
blaring without rhythm, without reason.
Intrusive thoughts:
not guests, but invaders
storming through synapses with muddy boots
and fire on their tongues.
They don't knock.
They kick the door in,
screaming absurdities and doomsday sermons,
blaring guilt like sirens in the dark.
"What if you said it wrong?"
"What if you’re not enough?"
"What if everything you love slips through your fingers?"
These thoughts crack like thunder
as I’m walking through the silence—
each step meant to be peace,
each breath a prayer for stillness,
shattered in a flash of noise and fear.
Their horns shatter more than quiet.
Even in calm moments—especially in calm moments—
they raise their instruments to their cracked lips
and unleash noise
like the sky splitting open.
I flinch.
I brace.
I try to drown them with breath,
with mantras,
with the soft rhythm of reality.
But still they play.
Relentless.
Discordant.
Majestic in their cruelty.
And yet—
somewhere beneath the chaos,
a single, trembling note of defiance holds:
not all noise is truth.
Not every trumpet speaks prophecy.
I let them play.
Let them blare and blast and rage.
And then I move anyway,
into the next moment—
not unshaken,
but still standing.

The Leviathan is long gone,
Its colossal form swallowed by the sea,
A shadow in the abyss that even the depths cannot contain.
Its scales, once glimmering like moonlit armor,
Now slide against the walls of time,
Their echo reverberating in forgotten halls,
Where memory lingers
Like dust in the corners of an old room.
The air still trembles
With the ancient hum of its presence—
A song of weight and gravity,
Of something vast and untouchable,
A pulse beneath the skin of the earth.
Beneath the surface, the walls remember:
How the Leviathan carved its path through the dark,
How its breath made the waters part like curtains,
How its voice, low and rumbling,
Shook the stars from their quiet homes.
And though the creature is gone,
Its scale-streaks remain.
They sing in the wind,
Whisper in the waves,
Speak in the silence between each breath—
A haunting reminder of what was,
Of what still slips through the cracks of the world,
Echoing into the bones of all who listen.

The waves come,
slow at first —
a soft hiss against my ankles,
salt threading through the cracks of my skin.
I stand there,
breath shallow,
the tide licking at the edges of my bones.
But it doesn’t stay soft.
The water rises,
crashing hard against my chest,
a cold weight driving into muscle and marrow.
It pulls —
dragging sand from beneath my feet,
stealing fragments of ground
until I’m sinking inch by inch
into the hollow it leaves behind.
I try to stand tall,
shoulders squared against the surge,
but the waves don’t stop.
They break harder,
white foam tearing through breath,
the sharp bite of salt in my throat
burning as I gasp for air.
The undertow pulls.
The current sinks teeth into my calves,
dragging me toward the dark depths,
and I know —
there is no fighting this.
No shore to reach for,
no hand to pull me free.
So I stay.
I let it crash.
Let the salt carve new lines into my skin,
let the water smooth me down
until I’m nothing but raw stone and sea glass
gleaming beneath a broken sky.
I know I am smaller now —
shaped by the ebb and swell,
etched thin by salt and time —
but I am still standing.
Even as the tide returns,
even as the waves rise again,
I remain.

Seems no one can prove me wrong.
And I keep tripping over myself..

Glimmer of hope falsely announces itself
And, of course, my eyes light up at the possibilities..

This time, as always, seems different..
.. As always.. I'm left naked. Vulnerable.

I've been bruised all over.

Had my shoulder torn out of place

Ribs cracked from a solid blow.

My brow split open. Didn't even notice it.

Found myself out-numbered once, and stood my ground.

I've come across pain plenty, but I have rarely felt hurt.

Hurt doesn't come in the form of conflict.

It comes in through words.

Words are what hurt.

I've fallen to my knees because of words.

I have felt my whole world sink from the sheer weight of what's been said or what has been left in writing.

Words have left me in tears.

Words have left me gasping for air...

Words can leave their own scars if they cut deep enough.

....So does Silence..

I never got to tell you
I did in fact pick a star out
For you...
I took my time, and found a real gem.

I told you mine was Sirius.
You said you never picked your own star.
Even though I said the next time we saw each other
I'd have one picked out, I never told you what it was.

I wanted to wait till Spring
When we could actually see it
And I could point it right out to you
And say, "That one's yours."

I was really starting to like you.
And I can only imagine that that was why
You stopped talking.
Because I readily gave too much.

I'm not mad.
Just terribly hurt.
Just like with every other girl
I shared myself with.

Antares...
Your star was going to be Antares.
The heart of the Scorpion.
I'll save it for someone who's worth giving my heart to.

It comes with teeth —
sharp and glinting beneath an implacable smile,
sinking in slow,
pressing firmly against bone
until breath feels too thin
and mornings blur into shadows.
It waits beneath my tongue,
a bitter taste I can’t spit out,
curling through my chest,
tight as wire,
soft as fog.
It knows how to be silent,
until it doesn’t.
Until it’s ripping through the walls,
scratching at the seams,
a low growl in the hollow of my ribs.
And the talons —
God, the talons —
hooked deep in muscle and marrow,
dragging me down
to the cold floor of my mind,
where light flickers thin as breath
and silence hums like static.
It pulls —
slow and steady,
through hours that fold into nothing,
through days that taste like dust.
I let it.
Sometimes it’s easier that way.
But there’s always a sliver of air,
a crack of light under the door.
And somehow,
somehow —
my hands find it.
The teeth leave scars.
The talons bruise deep.
But I rise,
aching,
raw,
breathless —
still here.

I stand before the mirror,
and I know the face.
Calm, composed,
eyes carrying only what they’ve lived,
no more.
But behind it,
the glass keeps going—
reflections trailing into the dark,
a long corridor
of me becoming
me becoming
me.
At first,
they follow faithfully.
A lifted hand.
A turning head.
Perfect mimicry,
clean as water mirroring sky.
But the further they go,
the more they soften—
not all at once,
not enough to alarm.
A hesitation.
A fraction too long between blinks.
A smile that holds
for a moment after I’ve let go.
The next face seems
just slightly dimmer—
as if the light can’t quite reach it,
or it doesn’t want to be seen
too clearly.
The eyes are the same,
but they don’t land on mine
so easily.
They graze past me,
settle somewhere just beyond.
And further still,
the faces forget their place.
One tilts before I do.
One breathes when I don’t.
Some begin to still altogether—
perfectly motionless,
like portraits
remembering how to be alive.
The change is never sharp.
It is a slow turning of a wheel
beneath still water,
a quiet drift
in a long dream.
Each face is mine,
but less so.
Each carries something in the eyes
I haven’t earned yet—
or never will.
Deeper down the glass,
the faces seem older
not in years
but in silence.
They wear composure
too tightly,
like masks that forgot
how to come off.
And at the furthest depth—
so far the glass hums with distance—
one face no longer mimics at all.
It only watches,
calm,
unmoving,
as if it has been here
far longer
than I have been looking.
And I don’t know
if it waits for me
to catch up,
or
to leave.

The callouses on my palms
speak of daily labor,
the weight of tools and hours stretching long,
hands that ache but keep moving,
gripping, pulling, lifting—
muscles sore, skin raw,
yet there is something simple in the rhythm
of this work,
a quiet certainty in the bending of wood
or the turning of a *****.
But inside,
the mind churns—
thoughts collide like a thousand hammers,
clanging against each other in the silence.
I cannot hold them,
cannot grasp or shape them
the way I do with my hands.
Each thought is a jagged piece
that shifts just when I think I have it.
The struggle in my hands is known,
familiar, tangible.
The struggle in my mind is endless,
slipping through my fingers like water,
pulling at me with no end in sight,
a puzzle with no solution
that I’ve learned to carry
but never set down.
When I walk away from the work,
my hands are sore but satisfied.
I can see what I’ve built,
what I’ve touched,
the progress of my labor marked in the world around me.
But the mind—
it never stops,
never rests.
The weight of its questions
hangs in the air like smoke
and I breathe them in
again and again,
wondering
if I'll ever be free
from the things I cannot fix
with my hands.

And just like that...
Those impenetrable walls
Of Confinement
Writhed out from under the infertile soil.

So long was it
The process
Of removing such
Obstructions

.....For what??

Only to be reaffirmed
There is no room for
Comfort.
Not when I am breathing.

I would much rather be playing
In traffic.
Than to face the insults
I was so battered with this evening.

Want to know how callous
A life can be?
Carry my kind of heart
For any length of time.

You will most certainly lose any sight of hope
Even in yourself.