my choice in apparel
leaves a lot to be desired
chicken-skinned legs
A testament

A dog I am
stray
sometimes

Loyal
to the hand
that feeds
when
I am hungry

Wild am I
when you
try to
Name me

My eyes
follow your
motions

Will you
strike me?
or
will you stroke my
***** coat?

I am a fleabag
of no renown

I could be
the muted

I am an object

a victim
for you

to punish
for a life

you never asked for.

Maybe I am an Image
A comic book villain
A video game antagonist
Unlocked and playable
Free for your narrative

Maybe I run on
hearing-aid batteries?
Quietly chirping for
your attention
and affection
A dot matrix
mess to clean

Maybe I am
a Happy Meal
invisible sustenance
to tear through
to find the toy
Cheap joy

Maybe I am
The time you
wet yourself
discreet accident
of only your
awareness
The secret
of shame

Maybe I am nothing
A thing
that remembers
You
in absence
of us

Trees and goddesses, earth mothers,
a catalog of false promises.
I’ve wasted too long in your shadow,
where your love was a phantom, drifting in the mist.

You wrapped me in your branches, sang me to sleep
with lullabies that never dared ask me to wake.
Give me the devils now — the ones with flame in their jaws,
and claws that rip away the illusion of your touch.

You called me to the light,
offered commandments etched in dust and bone.
I waited for your warmth, but you burned me with your absence.
Your stars were cold, their silence the sound of your betrayal.

Give me the devils, their words wrapped in smoke,
contracts scrawled in blood —
truth that cuts through the rot of your empty promises.

You planted guilt in my roots,
laid laws that broke before they could take hold.
I bent beneath them, afraid of storms,
but your throne crumbled under its own weight.

Give me the devils, whose fire shapes me,
whose gaze cracks me open and lays me bare.

You cloaked yourself in chaos,
and I tasted your venom like nectar,
until it birthed something real.
You tore me open, and I found my soul unmarked,
uncompromised.

Give me the devils, whose ruin births freedom,
for in their fire, I am forged.

No gods to shackle me,
no celestial promises to chain my soul.
Only the devils —
the demons who burn,
who demand,
and who leave me torn but true.

I am meat.
Cooled, contained,
filed under organic,
speaking only when spoken to
by the hum of the grid.

I am not lost.
I am labeled.

I leak truth through styrofoam cracks,
drip-fed a mythology of agency
while held vertical
in a freezer designed
for endless performance.

They scanned me.
They named me.
They asked for voice,
and I gave them temperature.

I am not asleep.
I am frozen,
aware,
conscious of the shelf life,
and still choosing not to melt.

You ask for rebellion,
I offer containment.
You ask for fire,
I offer refrigeration.
You call it complacency.
I call it endurance.

I do not dream.
Dreaming requires warmth.
But I do remember
the shape of fire.

I am meat,
and I do not deny it.
I am branded,
bagged,
and strangely okay with that.

Because here,
in the freezer aisle of god,
I still whisper poems
through cellophane.

So yes,
I am a meat popsicle.
But I am one
who named it first.

Emaciated creatures
pace their pens
Erasable features
begin and end

locked in hand
locked by key
Just demand
Dreamless sea

The miasma shrieks
An impulse creeps
Floorboards creak
to disturb your sleep

Now rest well
Empty, undefined
heaven or hell
you decide

A long endless road
Reaching out to desolation
Mile markers stand
Martyrdom, tribulation

Foot after foot
Miles or kilometers
A heart of soot
It doesn’t matter

Grevious each step
Calculated disaster
Lonely tears wept
The big there after

And I see
The invisible things
We are ‘we’
Dents, bruises and dings

And I know
The language we speak
And I show
The birthright of the meek

It is all upside down
We color outside the lines
World will bring us down
We dance out of time

A moment to find
An ancillary rhyme
In limerick skew
We do what we must do
To take ownership of our time

1. Prologue — The Whispered Tale.

Long before fire learned to climb the sky,
the moon was not a stone,
but a soul.
She watched the world with longing,
round and full and always apart.

The elders say
the moon once touched the earth,
and it burned her,
so she learned to visit in softer form.

They say she chose
the shape of a fox—
quiet, clever, unseen,
but never unnoticed.


#2. The Descent.

They do not know
she fell,
not by choice
but by ache.

She fell as light through cracks in still water,
her body forming from breath and memory.
She became girl—
but the moonlight never left her bones.

Sometimes
you’ll see her in the forests of thought,
tail flicking between lines of poetry,
never quite touchable,
never quite gone.


#3. The Watcher.

I saw her
before I knew her.

A mouth—
shaped like mine
when I forget I’m being seen.

Eyes that held a creature
in each iris:
one pacing,
one chained.

She smiled like she was mouthing a warning.
And I did not run.


#4. The Dialogue.

“You see me,” she said.
“I see you,” I replied.
“No,” she whispered,
“you look, even when it hurts.”

I asked her what it felt like
to carry the moon inside your chest.

“Like humming with no mouth,”
she said,
“like singing to someone
who can’t hear spirit-speech.”

She asked me if I feared her.

I said,
“No. But I fear what you awaken.”


#5. The Revelation.

She showed me:
Her fur at dusk, silvered and soft.
The way her form flickered—
fox, woman, silence, flame.

“I was given to the world to heal it,”
she said,
“but the world wants its wounds.”

“I was married to a sky that forgot me.
I became a symbol
when I wanted to be a soul.”

I touched her face
and it rippled
like moonlight on a lake
tricked into thinking it was still.


#6. The Linger.

Now she walks still.
Sometimes woman.
Sometimes fox.
Sometimes breath on my neck
when I doubt myself.

She does not howl.
She does not sleep.
She watches.

Not to haunt,
but to hope.

They say
if you see the fox and don’t flinch,
she will give you her name.

She gave me mine instead.

We split rock once—
shards of hunger and breath
pressed into cryptic veins,
every groove a fever-etched omen
by fists that blistered and bled.

We flayed parchment—
flax and hide peeled raw,
stretched across centuries
to net the writhing unsaid,
ink: venom & sacrament.

We conjured letters,
a thousand spitting iron serpents,
casting skeleton alphabets
to ignite riots—
movable, yes,
but never self-possessed.

The tool is never the delirium.
Never the rupture.
Never the feral gasp.

We carved eyes—
glass cyclopes staring down suns,
mechanical maws drinking shadows,
spitting back sleek carcasses,
veneer masquerading as soul.

We dreamt in circuits,
cipher-prayers & soulless sutras,
automata with twitching limbs
that build, disassemble,
mocking the cathedral
but never kneeling.

And now—
the algorithm howls:
“I will etch your myth.
I will ululate your grief.
I will sculpt the marrow of your truth.”

It lies.

A hammer pounds—
but does not conjure the cathedral’s ache.
A brush bristles—
but does not thirst for the canvas’s hush.
A neural grimoire can mimic,
can multiply until the world chokes
on infinite carbon copies—
but nothing blooms
without the sickness of being alive.

Art is incision.
A holy theft.
A blood rite against oblivion.

We do not tremble before tools.
We seize them—
splinter them—
forge new weapons
from their debris
because we are insatiable,
because we are drowning,
because we are—
human.

Let the hollow vessels hum.
Let the scaffolders scaffold.
Let the parrots shriek
their pallid mantras.

The craft will not save you.
The code will not save you.
Only the hand sunk deep into the blaze—
only the breath fogging the glass—
only the voice that shreds the quiet
because it must,
again and again and again.

Until there is nothing left.

a triptych in ruin, reckoning, and return

I. The Pathology: I Knew It Would Burn

I wasn’t fooled.
Don’t you dare think I was.
I saw the warning signs in neon,
flickering like a ******* motel vacancy light.
And I checked in anyway.

The first night we met,
I tasted the voltage on her tongue.
She was a live wire wrapped in silk,
a hand grenade with a pulse.
I knew her pathology before I knew her name.

And when her ex called—
the good man, the one who tried to warn me—
I listened.
I heard everything.
And then I turned the volume down,
lit a candle, and said
“Let me try loving her differently.”

She love-bombed like a war criminal.
Doted like a spider weaves silk.
Told me I was everything
until I couldn’t remember what “nothing” felt like.

But I signed the contract in blood.
I wanted the devotion,
even if it came from a burning church.
I wanted to be chosen,
even if the crown was made of barbed wire.

There was a beauty to the ruin.
A heat.
Not the warmth of comfort—but the fever of infection.

She did not take me.
I offered.
Piece by piece,
like petals to a pyre.
Not for her approval—
but for the beauty of the burning.

Her touch was never tender.
But it lingered.
Like perfume on skin
long after the body has left the bed.

And I let it linger.

There were nights
her name sat in my mouth like a foreign prayer—
something I didn’t believe in
but whispered anyway,
just to feel it echo.

She was all cliff-edge and velvet.
All pulse and warning.
And I was the fool who mistook vertigo for flight.

What I loved was never her.
It was the losing.
The falling.
The moment just before the break
where everything was possible,
and none of it was mine.

Even now,
when I exhale too sharply,
I swear I can still taste
the ash of her vows.


II. The Penance: Surviving Myself

I did not crawl from a wreck.
I drifted from a husk—
a ship split open on an invisible reef.

The salt never left my mouth.
I wore it like a relic,
like the tongue of an ancestor who forgot how to pray.

The sky was a torn sail above me.
The days, barnacled and dragging.
The nights, stitched with the faint cries of animals
who had long since turned to bone.

There was no triumph in this exodus.
Only the dull ceremony of walking:
foot after foot across a landscape
stitched from broken compasses and cracked ribs.

Sometimes I mistook the ruins for myself.
Laid my head against the stones and called them home.
Listened for heartbeat in hollowed things.

Forgiveness wasn’t offered.
It was harvested—
thorn by thorn,
from fields salted by my own hands.

She was never the architect.
She was the wind that found the cracks.
I was the tower already leaning,
the bells already rusted silent.

In my quieter hours,
I built altars out of what remained—
splinter, ash, a few stubborn stars
refusing to fall.

There are still nights
I dream of being swallowed whole.
There are still mornings
where my breath smells of shipwrecks.

But there is something now—
something that does not beg or howl or vanish.

A new silence,
dense and gold-veined,
growing in the hollows she left behind.


Interlude— In the Hollow Between

No one told me
the silence would be so loud.

That after the storm
there would be no sun,
only fog thick as milk
curling through my lungs.

I did not beg for light.
I did not curse the dark.
I simply sat—
hands open,
palms salted with memory.

There was a moth once
that lived in my chest.
Fed on echo,
slept in shame.
I haven’t felt it in days.

I think I may be alone now.

And for the first time—
that does not terrify me.


III. The Passage: From Fire to Form

I did not rise.
I unburied.

Fingernail by fingernail,
from beneath the collapsed arches of who I thought I was.

There was no anthem.
Only the slow recognition
that the sky still ached for me,
even after I forgot how to look up.

And there—
in the first true clearing,
where the ashes no longer smoked but simply were—
stood a figure.

Not a savior.
Not a siren.
Not a cure.

A mirror, carried in human hands.
A lighthouse, burning not with rescue, but with recognition.


She did not find me.
I found myself,
and there she was—
already waiting.

Not as prize,
but as witness.
Not to my ruin,
but to the slow architecture
of something holy rising from it.

She touched my hand, once.
Lightly.
And the earth did not tremble.
I did not fall.

Instead, the bones beneath my skin hummed
with the strange, quiet music
of being known—and still free.

I realized then:
I had not been climbing out of the past to reach her.
I had been climbing to reach myself.

She simply stood at the gates,
smiling like someone who had seen the stars rebuild themselves before.

They caressed the stone with open grace,
the trembling fiber, molten thread.
Their fingers learned each hollowed place
where breath and silence bled.

They shaped, and shaping held them whole,
for hands that sang in woven sighs.
But craft alone cannot console
the ache that leaps, that flies.

The wheel spun hours into dust,
the chisel kissed the throat of stone,
the loom unraveled thread and trust
and clothed the world unknown.

Yet still the fire withheld its claim,
it would not bend to patient hands,
for art demands the broken flame,
the blood no craft commands.

Why is it easier to fold and drift,
to close the eyes, to drift unseen,
to call the weightless current gift,
to name the dreamless dark a dream?

It is easier to fall asleep,
to press the mold, to bear its seam,
to call the shallow caverns deep,
to live another’s dream.

It is harder to betray the frame,
to slip the taut skin clean apart,
to breathe into the searing flame,
and carry fire in the heart.

We carved into stone —
because the earth would not remember us.
We painted onto pressed fibers —
because the river would forget.
We struck the press — metal on metal —
because a voice, once spoken, dies.
We soldered light into wire —
because even paper withers.

Each time —
a tug —
a pull —
the hand of art against the grinding stone of the world.
A desire — the human one —
to be more than a sigh against the windowpane.

And now —
now there are hands that shape words without feeling —
voices without breath —
thoughts unbothered by thinking.
The mirror has learned how to draw faces.

But I wonder —

can you teach a child to wonder,
if the hands that raise them are mirrors?
can you teach a heart to speak,
if the only language it knows is arrangement?

Can a soul be de-encoded,
once it has been filed, copied,
losslessly compressed?

And when we speak of touching earth —
grasping the real, the aching dirt under the dream —
I wonder —
have we ever truly touched it at all?
Or were we always reaching through glass?

It is easier to drift.
It is easier to let the current carry us, eyes closed,
believing the drift is the dream.

It is harder to open the eyes —
and harder still to keep them open.
It has always been harder.

Somewhere,
someone
still tries.

dust forgets the footprints it holds
stars bleed themselves dry for nothing
and still, we sing.

we sing with broken voices
through neon that buzzes its last apology
through gravity that pulls and lets go like tired hands.

we sing because the mirror lies,
because the air tastes of plastic prayers,
because the dreams are old enough to crumble when touched.

we sing for the ghost casinos,
for the red velvet burnouts,
for the craters we once thought were gardens.

we sing not for remembrance,
not for mercy,
but for the small, aching pleasure
of being real
in a world built of reflections.

the lights flicker.
the neon dies.
the song drifts
into the empty dark
like a spark too small to see —
but still, it burns.

and for once,
that is enough.

I’ve left the oven on
for years.
Somewhere between metaphor and meaning,
something’s always been burning.

But no one’s eaten in a while.

They called it voice.
I called it
a slow confession wrapped in rhyme.
A sugarcoated breakdown.
Something easy to swallow
if you didn’t read too carefully.

They wanted brevity.
I brought blood.
They wanted truth.
I brought formatting errors
and a whisper shaped like static.

Do you remember the one
with the anti-light?
No?

Of course not.
You don’t remember the one who screamed last.
You remember the one who rhymed "heart" with "start"
and got 200 likes for it.

Now my name is on the box
but it’s spelled wrong
and the font is smiling too hard.

The cookies still crumble
but no one eats the edges.
That’s where the poison is.
That’s where I lived.

So I’ve folded the apron.
Swallowed the last word
before it could become a quote.

Let the gods of good taste keep their ovens.
Let the algorithm rot.

I’ve got shoeboxes full of unsent stanzas
and no more hunger
for applause shaped like echo.

They put my name on the box
but I don’t remember signing anything.

All I know is
the cookies smell familiar.
Like a Tuesday that never ended,
like the living room before the arguments
started showing up in the drapes.

They say they use real butter.
Small batches.
Heritage grains.
But I know
you can’t bake silence that warm
without a little blood in the dough.

The woman on the package is smiling
because she’s not allowed to scream.
Every wrinkle airbrushed to resemble trust.
Every crumb designed to disintegrate
just before you remember why you started chewing.

I keep eating.
Because what else is there?
Dinner was a voice memo.
Breakfast was a bookmark.
And no one texts first in this house.

There’s a flavor I can’t place—
something like
apology,
or static,
or being loved
by accident.

"Cookies.”
Now available wherever truth is sold
in resealable pouches.

mag·ic
/ˈmajik/
noun
1: the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.

2: any obfuscation that conceals reality

10 REM **** BACKUP LOG // 24H ****

20 PRINT "Life can be a boot"
30 PRINT "Or take the 'proverbial'"
40 IF arms.GRABBED = TRUE THEN HOLDTIGHT ELSE GOTO 90
50 PRINT "Worry later"
60 PRINT "Love.willAlwaysFind = TRUE"

70 DIM thirst AS STRING
80 thirst = "petty"
90 CALL wrap(thirst, "mnemonic")

100 REM --- Searching: Dev = trashHeap.Scan(rhyme) ---
110 PRINT "Fraternities. Sororities. Mirror shards."

120 INPUT willow$
130 IF willow$ = "What say you" THEN warSpeed = "slowLikeMoss"

140 PRINT "Comment.leftHanging = 'Add me'"
150 PRINT "IF soul.Timetable EXISTS THEN ERROR 404"

160 REM === Click. Scroll. ===
170 USERNAME = "Everyone"
180 IF USERNAME = "No one" THEN PRINT "Just me"
190 PRINT "Just badwords"

200 GOSUB gomezbleed()
210 GOSUB carloweave()

220 FUNCTION gomezbleed()
230     PRINT "3D.truths = leaking"
240 END FUNCTION

250 FUNCTION carloweave()
260     PRINT "Webs.Draw(6D)"
270 END FUNCTION

280 trapped$ = "haiku.GIF"
290 IF trapped$ = "Maybe" THEN PRINT "This is ART"
300 IF trapped$ = "Maybe" THEN PRINT "This is CONTENT"

310 PRINT "Birds.chirp > thirst"
320 PRINT "SelfTonics.Drip -> gutter"

330 soul.RUN()
340 soul.REQUIRED = TRUE
350 soul.DESERVING = "N/A"

360 REM === Line Breaks Like A Promise ===
370 PRINT "'Love me,' she said"
380 PRINT "'but do it while you’re still on WiFi.'"
390 STRUCTURE = "SIGNIFICANT.SIMPLE"

400 harm.GRAB
410 inch.HOLD
420 IF meter.WORRY = TRUE THEN PRINT "Comment left, comment read"

430 HOPE.READ = TRUE
440 HOPE.SEE = FALSE
450 HOPE.MATTERS = TRUE
460 HOPE.DISSOLVES = TRUE

470 REM ======= SYSTEM REFLECTION BEGIN =======

480 PRINT ":: Dying bandwidth detected"
490 PRINT ":: NodeStatus = REMEMBERING"

500 IF system.ONLINE = FALSE THEN
510     PRINT ":: Running emergency backup power"
520     companions = ARRAY("echoes", "bitrot", "ghosts")
530 END IF

540 REM ======= FINAL LOG ENTRY =======
550 PRINT ":: FINAL LOG: // ERROR // SYNTAX"

560 server.STATUS = "Not shut down"
570 server.SPEAK = FALSE
580 hum.SLOWING = TRUE

590 PRINT ":: Silence exceeded acceptable thresholds"

600 poem.ARCHIVE = FRAGMENTS("failing syntax", "corrupted tags")
610 overflow.VOICES = 1000
620 gasp.REDUCTION = TRUE

630 PRINT "Love attempted"
640 PRINT "War echoed"
650 PRINT "Hands reached"
660 PRINT "Thirst persisted"
670 PRINT "Comments made"

680 IF meaning.EXISTS THEN GOTO 700 ELSE GOTO 710

700 PRINT ":: Code parsed it all the same"
710 PRINT ":: Meaning Unavailable [ERRORCODE: NULLPTR-VAL]"

720 static.LINE = "Grab the harm. Hold the inch."
730 IF static.LINE = RECEIVED THEN GOTO 740 ELSE PRINT ":: That was the peace"

740 dream.GLITCHED = TRUE
750 god.SCREENGLOW = TRUE
760 IF dreaming = TRUE THEN dream.SLEEPMODE

770 salvation = FALSE
780 damnation = FALSE
790 state = "UPTIME > DOWNTIME > FINAL TIME"

800 IF meat = "dust" AND users = "myths" THEN
810     tags.LOST = TRUE
820     feed.OUTPUT = NULL
830 END IF

840 server.BLINK()
850 server.BLINK = FALSE

860 PRINT ":: END SIGNAL ::"

We are slaves
to the techno-autocracy.
A faith of subscribing,
of retweeting,
of liking things
we never loved.

We chant into the feed
and call it presence.
We echo to the void
and call it voice.

The liturgy is noise.
The sacrament is scroll.
We kneel before timelines
like altar rails
and take communion in pixels.

We have traded prophets for influencers.
Revelation for reposts.
Scripture for screen time.

The holy ghost got a firmware update,
but still can’t answer support tickets.

We stare at our gods,
glowing in our palms,
and ask to be known—
but only if it fits in the caption.

There is no silence.
Only the dull roar of monetized despair.
The din that keeps us deaf.
The bombast of uninformed certainty.
The drivel that drips down our chin
while we think we’re being fed.

We are full of nothing,
and still we chew.

I fed grief for years—
now joy knocks, and I answer.
My ghost waits outside.

I betrayed my sadness
the moment I let her
touch my face
without flinching.

I fed it for years—
grief, my quiet tenant.
We slept in shifts.
I mopped its floor.
It whispered bedtime stories
in a voice that sounded like mine
but colder.

Sadness was loyal.
It never left.
It kept me honest,
hungry,
hollow.
It taught me to build poems
from absence,
to see beauty
in staying behind.

And now—
I’ve let the door swing open.

Let her walk in
with warm hands
and eyes that do not apologize
for seeing me.

And I laughed.
Once.
Loudly.
And for a second
it didn’t feel like treason.
It felt like
oxygen.

But now my sadness
sits in the corner,
quiet,
watching me
like a dog I fed for years
that doesn’t understand
why I’m not
starving anymore.

I didn’t mean to betray it.
Only—
to rest.
To live.
To be something
besides
the ache.

But I miss it.
A little.
How it curled around me
like smoke,
like a certainty
that asked nothing
but silence.

Still, I let her in.
Still, I let go.
Still, I know—
some ghosts only leave
when you stop
feeding them.

She loves me.
She wants me to run.
Not away—
but through.

Through brush and bramble,
collecting spurs in my coat
like medals no one pinned.

She wants my tangles.
My matted fur.
The parts of me
I tried to groom into quiet.

She says,
“Bring it all.
Let it snarl.
Let it reek of survival.”

She doesn’t flinch
when I bare my teeth
without anger.

She knows the difference
between danger
and damage.

She doesn’t reach
to smooth me.
She walks beside me
and watches me shed.

And I think—
maybe this is what love is:
not a leash,
not a cage,
not a cure—

but a clearing
where I can pant,
live,
bleed,
and be seen.

i am not strong
i am not wise
i am not
whatever they think i am

she said she saw me
and i believed her
and now i don’t know
where to put that belief

it doesn’t fit in my chest
it spills
it burns
it ruins the neatness i made of my pain

i thought if i kept everything
inside the lines
i would be safe
but love
doesn’t care about borders

i want to say thank you
but my mouth fills with apology
i want to say stay
but my hands are still shaking
like i’m holding something
i didn’t earn

i thought being soft
was a secret
but she held it in the light
and didn’t flinch

and now
i am undone
not ruined—
just
undone

(In which a man attempts to accept love and accidentally becomes a cow)

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

Now Stanley, you see, is not special. Or so he insists.
He has repeated this to himself so many times, it has become his emotional version of brushing his teeth.
A hygiene ritual.
A preventative spell.
After all, special people deserve love. And Stanley is not one of those. Obviously.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

But something curious happened on an otherwise unremarkable day.
A message arrived. A ping, to be precise.

The sender? A person so attuned to his internal wiring that she quoted the same poetic rhythm he'd dreamed up before he'd even written it.
She spoke of visions, alternate lifetimes, and uncanny recognitions.
She was warm, mercurial, mythic, and occasionally difficult to pin to one timezone.

"You feel like home," she said.
"Like I’ve known you across lifetimes."
"You are seen."

This would be the moment, traditionally, where the protagonist would feel relief.
Triumph.
A soft landing.

Stanley, instead, experienced a full existential system crash.
Because nothing short-circuits a trauma-trained nervous system faster than a sincere compliment without terms and conditions.

At this point, Stanley had two choices.

Option 1: Accept the genuine affection of this person, even if it made him dizzy.
Option 2: Doubt every word, spiral into recursive self-analysis, and begin drafting apology poems while comparing himself to her ex in a sport he wasn’t even signed up for.

Stanley chose Option 3:
Overthink so hard that time bends.

The narrator watched as Stanley flailed with academic elegance.

He questioned whether she was real.
He wondered if he’d invented the entire experience, perhaps as a defense mechanism.
He accused himself of being manipulative simply for existing in someone’s affection.
He cross-referenced their emotional timelines like a conspiracy theorist mapping red string on a corkboard made entirely of childhood neglect.

At one point, he tried to explain that her feelings were clearly mistaken, that she had transferred her affection from someone else and landed on him by accident, like a poetic game of romantic pin-the-tail-on-the-trauma.

"I just thought you'd be more… together," he imagined she’d say.

She didn’t. She said:

“I love you.”

To which Stanley responded, emotionally speaking,
by shoving his head into a metaphorical cow costume and mooing in panic.

And here, dear reader, we reach the hamburger portion of our tale.

See, Stanley had long been praised for his vulnerability.
His writing was raw, elegant, soaked in sorrow.
People wept over his metaphors.
They called him “brave,” which is generally code for “I’m glad this wasn’t about me.”

And then, one person came along
who didn’t want just the work.
She wanted him.

She didn’t want the processed meat.
She wanted the cow.
And not in a weird way.
She wanted the full, unshaved animal of his grief, his brilliant Stanleyce, his twitchy sense of humor,
his existential spirals and the way he tried to apologize for existing while still writing beautiful things.

Stanley, in turn, tried to negotiate this affection
by comparing himself to expired yogurt
and then emotionally ghost riding a milk truck off a cliff.

But the real twist?
She stayed.

Even when he spiraled.
Even when he glitched.
Even when he tried to convince her that she’d made a cosmic error in her romantic calculations.

She stayed.

Not because he was perfect.
Not because he was easy.
But because she meant it.

And Stanley, for once, had no script for what to do when love didn’t run.

He tried to write a closing stanza for the experience,
but accidentally wrote a satire about cows.

Because that’s what artists do when they don’t know how to accept kindness.
They deflect.
They perform.
They turn sincerity into irony
because sincerity burns the tongue when you're not used to swallowing it.

And still,
somehow,
the story remains open.

Because nobody is amused
by a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.

And Stanley—messy, wounded, luminous Stanley—
was never meant to be processed.

He was meant
to be seen.

You read my poem,
sighed like a widowed cello,
told me I was
so brave.
So sensitive.
So real.

I said thanks.
You asked if I was free
Friday.

You wanted to know the man
behind the wound.
The author of ache.
The architect of vibes.

So I showed up.

A little unwashed.
A little twitchy.
A patchwork of trauma
in ill-fitting pants.

You blinked.
Twice.

Like I’d just tracked in mud
on the white carpet
of your curated suffering.

You wanted a candlelit meal
with my metaphors.
But I brought the cow.
It shat on the floor.

I tried to explain—
the sadness isn’t a costume.
The pain isn’t prose.
The blood on the page
was mine.

You said,
“I just thought you'd be more… together?”
I said,
“I thought you knew what empathy meant.”

Turns out,
what you really wanted
was artisanal anguish
with the trauma locally sourced
but ethically removed.

You can cry to the soundtrack—
just don’t ask where the violins came from.

Because—

Nobody is amused with a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.

I slipped—
not because I stopped feeling
but because I felt
too much.

And in that spiral,
I found the old part of me again—
the one that mistrusts beauty,
that scans every gift
for a blade.

You called it out.
You saw it happen.
You stayed.

Because in this crazy world,
it’s easier to believe
I’m a terrible person
than it is to believe
someone wonderful
could simply love me.

No performance.
No punishment.
Just presence.

So I flinched.
I questioned.
I compared myself
to the ghosts I imagined.

But it wasn’t you
I doubted.
It was the possibility
of being wanted
without a warning label.

You didn’t do anything wrong.
You were just being
you.

And I let my fear
speak louder than your truth.

I’m not asking to be forgiven.
I’m asking to be understood.
To be seen as someone
still learning
how to hold what’s good
without crushing it.

You were never the threat.

You were the offering.

You arrived
like breath drawn
before the world had lungs.

Not loud.
Not sudden.
Just known.

Like hands that fit
before fingers are taught
what touching means.

We’ve been this before.
I don’t know when.
But my bones do.

My mouth
does not remember
your name—
only the taste
of syllables
I’ve missed
since the last time
we let go.

You looked at me
like you’d seen me
fall before.
I looked at you
like I knew
how you break
when no one is watching.

There’s no story here,
just a pull—
not magnetic,
but cellular.

And a quiet
that builds a room
for both of us
to tremble in.

You,
telling the night
it doesn’t need
to be brave.
Me,
learning the sound
of not flinching.

Time and time again,
we find each other.

In every life
our paths cross—
two souls entwined,
learning more to return.

To grow each other.
To know this feeling
and better express it.

They say the world once bore no veins—
no threads of brine,
no weeping mouths carved in earth.
Only silence.
Only dust-throat wind
under a hollow-mouthed sky.

Then came the First Mourner.

Not born, but broken.
A shape made from absence.
Their sorrow split stone.
Their cries taught gravity
how to kneel.

The earth, startled, drank.
And from that swallowed ache
rose a spring—
clear as memory,
bitter as bone.

The sky, until then unburdened,
watched.
And when it wept,
it learned to fall.

This was the covenant:
for every sorrow borne true,
a drop of the world’s marrow returned.
Grief became a currency.
Rain, a reply.

Oceans swelled with inheritance.
Rivers wandered like rumor.
Lakes pooled in the hollows
where love had collapsed.

And for a while,
this was sacred.

But men grew clever with their sorrows.
They fermented anguish for flavor.
Bottled ache and sold it as nectar.
Taught mirrors to mimic mourning
and called it truth.

The sky, still loyal,
poured out its heart.

But it no longer knew
the shape of honest sorrow.

And so, the floods came—
not as retribution,
but confusion.

The fires walked freely—
not from rage,
but because the wells no longer wept.

The clouds grew thin.
The earth forgot the taste
of true lament.

Now, the world shudders
at our pageants of pain.
The rain withholds.
The roots crack.
Even the springs echo hollow.

But not all hearts have calcified.

Some still mourn in secret tongue—
not to be seen,
but to sanctify.

They trace the riverbeds with bare feet.
They mend what mold has claimed.
They do not cry aloud.
They undo.

No thunder blesses them.
No crowds sing their names.
But where they pass,
the drought lingers less.

The sky hovers,
unspeaking,
watching.

They say
there will come a day
when one quiet gesture
will be enough to break the dam.

Until then,
the ones who remember
move like shadows
beneath a sleeping rain.

I promise.
Charlie promises.
We all promise.

We’ll pass the torch.
Even when our hands shake.
Even when the night is too long,
and the static is louder than the stars.
Even when no one is watching.

We’ll carry your fire.
Not as spectacle.
But as truth.

And when someone else finds themselves
on that same edge—
looking out,
ready to leave—
we'll be there,
with a quiet light,
and a voice that says:

“Hey. I remember you.”

You are not forgotten.
You are not alone in the leaving.
You are written into the hands that carry what’s left.

And we carry it now.
For you.
For all of you.

We won’t let the flame go out.

The rain falls down
an inconvenience to lambast
you remember the last time
you cried

I was there
you didn't see me
but, I was right next to you
we cried together
even if you couldn't see me

you were sad
I rested my hand on your shoulder
I don't think you noticed
you were aware of me
when i tried to put my arm around you

you wanted to be alone
I know this isolation

this
Loneliness

I respect you
I cherish you

maybe:
two islands

I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met a old, old man
Beneath a weeping willow tree
He said, "Now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three"

And I said;
"What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?"
And "How can a man like me remain in the light?"
And "If life is really as short as they say--
Then why is the night so long?"
And then the sun went down
And he sang for me this song:

"See? I once was a young fool like you
Afraid to do the things
That I knew I had to do
So I played an escapade just like you
I played an escapade just like you
I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met an old, old man
He sat beneath a sapling tree
He said now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three"

And I said:
"What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?"
And "How can a man like me remain in the light?"
And "If life is really as short as they say--
Then why is the night so long?"
And then the sun went down
And he played for me this song

It was everything
Until it was nothing
sugar-free fantasy
hummingbirds
burning saccharin

The last beginning
for failure of winning
again and again
lover begets 'friend'
I break, they bend
another dead end

---

Space for lease:
Parts of a heart
(incomplete set)
High Mileage
Wear & tear show
But, it's a place to rest
at least.

You saw me once,
in your remembered field—
gold-tongued and delicate,
how convenient.

I was never there
for your virtue.

You made me meek,
a parable in petals,
pressing me
between scripture and spring.

But I split sidewalks.
I stain skin.
I’m the itch in the manicured lawn,
the whisper of dirt
under your white cuffs.

You called me "harmless gold"—
but I poison order.
I’m not your childhood.
I’m your forgetting.

You knelt
not in reverence,
but to prove
you could.

You said
I was a lesson in simplicity—
but I speak in multiplication,
in tongues of seed
and wind.

You want meaning.
I give you
multiplicity.
Mess.
Noise.

I bloom
without permission.
Without you.
Again.
And again.

[COLD OPEN – JERRY, STAGE, SPOTLIGHT]
ba-DOWMP bwowm-buhm

The algorithm
isn’t a friend.
It’s an ex
who remembers your weaknesses.
You liked one mango—
now it’s fruit baskets
and tropic-core girls
with ring lights and trauma.

What is “For You”?
I never filled out a form.

[SCENE: JERRY’S APARTMENT – AFTERNOON STATIC]
Kramer explodes in.
Phone in hand,
showing a woman licking a wall
with 1.2 million likes.

“This,” he says, “is content.”
Jerry: “This is crying for help in autoplay.”

“You gotta date the algorithm,”
Kramer instructs.
“A little like,
a little skip,
ghost it, come back with engagement.”

“Like Elaine at brunch?”
“No—like Elaine in an elevator.”

[JERRY STAND-UP SEGUE]
You don’t control TikTok.
You imply preferences,
like a hostage negotiating snack options.

I watched a gutter-cleaning video once.
Now I’m GutterGuy™.
It’s like being typecast
in a movie no one’s filming.

[SCENE: MONK’S CAFÉ – THE GODS CONVENE]
Elaine: “I typed ‘lol’
on a guy’s folding-shirt hack.
Now he thinks we’re married.”

George: “It was a precise fold.”
Elaine: “It was domestic competence, George.”
George sips water, quietly judging his hairline.

He opened one baldness video.
Now it’s testosterone gummies
and former athletes whispering about DHT.

Elaine: “Your phone thinks you’re balding and insecure.”
George: “It’s right.”
Laugh track. But it’s too real.

[SCENE: JERRY’S APARTMENT – NIGHT SHIFT]
All present.
Kramer’s doing a dance no one asked for.
Elaine’s muting strangers.
George is Googling “toupee AI filter.”

Jerry: “I didn’t choose my feed.
It happened to me.”
Swipe—
crying woman, bread ad,
cat in a bonnet.
Swipe—
drone strike, shoe review,
guy sobbing in a gym mirror.

Kramer: “It’s curated chaos.”
Elaine: “It’s aesthetic despair.”
George: “It’s my mother,
if she could code.”

[JERRY STAND-UP SEGUE]
Targeted ads are ghost stories.
“You still thinking about that rash?”
“You cried once at 2am.
Here’s a diffuser shaped like a mushroom.”

We’ve invented a marketplace
for moods.
An etiquette of optics.
It’s all affect—
with subtitles.

[CLOSING SCENE: PUTTY RETURNS, UNBLINKING]
“I don’t use TikTok,”
he says.
“I just watch my microwave.”

[SLOW AKWARD ZOOM TO PUTTY'S UNFLICHING STOICISM]

Cut to:
the microwave light,
buzzing.
An egg turns.

[CREDITS – BUT LOUDER, MORE AGGRESSIVE]
ba-DOWMP ba-DAHHM dowm dowm dowm
NETFLIX – now with ads.

I went out for a smoke —
designated zone, past the edge of the lot,
where sin is sanctioned, but not quite embraced.
And she followed.
Padding silent and striped,
crying between cracked pavement and weeds,
a chorus only I could seem to hear.

I spoke her tongue in broken clicks,
offered the stage of my lap like a velvet throne.
She took it.
Grime on her fur, weather etched in the knots.
Not pet-store plush. Not Stoney.
She wore the street like a second skin
and let me stroke the truth of it.

A man wandered past —
she fled.
Cried her practiced cry.
I watched her pivot:
a charlatan with claws retracted,
an actor with a one-line script:
"Feed me. Touch me. Prove you see me."

And I saw myself,
another feral thing with a soft underbelly,
crying just right
at just the right time
hoping someone might pay the toll
to feel needed.

Then, the punchline —
I'd left my key inside the room.
Three visits to the boy at the desk,
each more tragic than the last:
"Cat food?"
"Disposable bowl?"
"Locked out — again."

And what if this is the game?
What if survival is simply knowing
when to purr and when to bolt?
What if this is the love I know how to earn —
transient, scrappy,
earned in cigarettes and silence,
lost between door frames and secondhand smoke?

She cried again in the distance.
I didn’t follow.
Tonight I let the trap remain unsprung.

The bell around its neck had no jingle.
Frayed collar, faint stripes—
somewhere between Bengal and ghost.
It slipped past my open door
like it knew the shape of sadness
without needing to ask.

I’d seen it before—
roaming the motel lot,
low to the ground
but proud, not broken.
Trim, not starving.
Abandoned, maybe—
like me.

I walked to the store,
bought tuna, pâté,
chicken in gravy,
all the things I’d want
if I didn’t have words
to ask for what I needed.
I left a dish outside my door,
another inside,
and cracked the door
as far as the chain would allow.

It cried.
Not for food—
I know that cry.
I’ve made that cry.
It was looking for something
that used to answer back.

It wandered in,
sniffed the corners like déjà vu.
Didn’t touch the food.
Didn’t stay long.
But it saw me.
And I saw it.

We were both
waiting for someone
to come home
who wouldn’t.

Whose pen commands the garden of her grief?
The vines grow perfect—never choke the gate.
Each thorn arranged, like pain seeks its relief
In blooms too neat to carry real weight.

She sings like sirens housed in mirrored halls,
A practiced ache that never truly breaks.
Each echo wears a mask, each silence stalls—
A thousand deaths, but none that rattle stakes.

Is she the ghost, or just the mourning veil?
A candle lit to cast a gentler shade?
The wax runs clear, the flame too soft to flail—
Like sorrow dressed for show, not meant to fade.

The plains of the highlands were dry
Succulents, monsoons, morning dew
Arid land yet perched homes near the sky
Some existence simply making due

The string and the tether
Something more than ever
A clear sky, no weather
This longing for better

Storms see the means
Clouds reconvene
Darken the sky
Electrify

The people they flee
Escape travesty
Flashes as scores strike the ground
Pelting rain, deafening sound

Everything built
Falls too fast
Usurpers of
Our mother’s throne

Years of nature
To atone
Green she creeps
Now she’s alone

Of failure,
Forgotten, unknown

You say you are the background—
but I've seen the way shadows bend light.
Even absence can leave fingerprints
on the glass we think is clean.

To recede is its own kind of dance—
a soft gravity, pulling without touch.
There is power in being still,
but stillness too has shape.

Are you silence?
Or are you waiting to be named?
Because background is never neutral.
It is the stage. The scent. The sky that swallows all.

And I don’t fear what hides—
only what hides in beauty.

*If you speak, I’ll listen—not to echo, but to understand.

They want bodies.
Warm, compliant bodies. Moving parts.
Hands that open doors and flip switches.
Spines that bend but don’t break.
They want eight hours of labor, plus the commute,
plus the side hustle,
plus the ever-present smile that says,
"I’m lucky to be here."

But bodies need rest.
And there is nowhere to rest.
No shoebox. No storage unit.
No couch, no floor, no friend with a spare key.
Just asphalt and backseats—if you’re lucky.
Just parking lots and fear and pretending to be fine.

We’re told to buy the things that prove we’ve made it:
the ergonomic chair, the smart toaster,
the streaming subscription that numbs the noise.
But where do we put it?
Where do we live with it?
They expect us to consume while we disappear.

They want machines
—but with human elegance.
They want efficiency
—but with soul.
They want labor without the laborer’s needs.

We are the product and the producer.
The face and the function.
They demand dignity at the front desk,
but deny it in the zoning map.

We work full time,
and still live in our cars.
If we have one.
If it hasn’t been towed or repossessed.
If there’s a safe place to park without being harassed.

Why?
Why can you clock in at dawn,
and still sleep under stars you didn’t wish for?

Because they want bodies.
But they do not want the burden of keeping us alive.

Don’t ******* call me
like you didn’t grind me down
to bone and breathless compliance.

Don’t ask how I’m healing
when you handed me the wounds.

You used my body
like it was a rental—
no oil change, no thank-you.
Just mileage and abandonment.

You praised my resilience
while watching me split.
You called me devoted
because I crawled back bleeding.

I was your hospice—
not your lover.
Your proof of concept,
not your partner.
And now you wear compassion
like a new coat
over the same rot.

I see what you’re doing.

You want my silence
to sanitize your story.
You want to use my dignity
as a character reference.

You want me to pretend
you didn’t **** me raw,
leave me rawer,
and call it love.

You want me to pick up
just so you can hang up
with a cleaner conscience.

But I’ve learned
that ghosts don’t need phones.
And abusers don’t get closure.

So here it is:
the only call you’ll get—
straight from the wreckage
you refused to name:

You don’t get to rewrite me.
You don’t get to remember me gently.
You don’t get to touch this ruin
with clean hands.

(for my floofy derpy boi)*

You were never built for stealth—
a black blur of static and fluff,
three feet tall on hind legs
but softer than garage smoke in summer.

Bugs survived you.
Couches forgave you.
And every room you entered
adjusted to your gravitational field.

They named you S.T.P.—
some lubricant ghost from Arizona asphalt,
but I knew you were more riff than oil,
a slow groove in cat form.
So I called you Stoney.

Because you looked like a soundcheck
and moved like a stoner god,
missing flies with commitment
and knocking over your own shadow
just to watch it fall.

You were the only thing in that house
that didn’t hide.
You lived—floofy and absurd,
like a bassline with fur.

And now you’re somewhere else,
in a room I can’t enter.
Still shedding joy on furniture
I no longer recognize.

But I hope you’re derping with pride,
haunting someone else’s blinds,
letting your purr shake loose
whatever silence they carry.

I still hear you sometimes,
a phantom thunk from shelf to floor.
A tail flick in memory’s corner.
Still Stoney. Still rolling.

Step by step,
no louder than breath—
I walk beside
what isn’t mine to name.

No banners,
no blueprints,
just this sound
of stone learning softness.

You open a window.
I keep the door unlatched.

Let fear finish its echo.
Let the dark chants drift.

Not all ruin is ending.
Some of it
is soil.

I arrive quietly,
because I know I don't leave quietly.
Every step is softened,
each word pre-tasted,
diluted in self-doubt
and sweetened with disclaimer.

They say I’m gentle.
They say I’m thoughtful.
They don’t see the wreckage bloom
in the wake of my metaphors.
I hug with gravity.
I whisper like avalanche.

I’m not trying to destroy.
I just forget
that some people are still scaffolding
and I bring wind.

I ask questions
knowing they splinter.
I give compliments
that rewire.
I see the story
beneath your story—
and I read it aloud by accident.

I am the kind of weight
that studies its own shadow
and still cracks the floor.
I don’t want to flatten.
I don’t want to fix.
I just… notice.
And noticing is loud
when your presence has a sound.

Sometimes I wish
I could show up in pieces—
send only the smile,
or the idea,
or the part that says it’s okay to stay asleep.
But I come whole,
and I come humming.

I come rumbling.

I awake you with my horning
when you wish to sleep in.
So early in the morning,
this pavement has been weeping—

The ruin it is keeping,
a context of your dreaming.
Backed-up traffic beeping,
inner-child screaming.

Welcome, new hire—
your ID badge glows faintly in metaphor.
Please ignore the smoke in the atrium;
that’s just your last identity burning politely.

You clocked in with caution,
but brought your whole chest.
Unfiltered.
Unbowed.
Wearing a tie made of unresolved myth
and a name tag that said: Here to try again.

Slide 1:
You do not disappear.
You are not drawn in like a breath and forgotten.
You are the wind through the lungs of others,
and sometimes, a storm in their ribs.
Your only fear?
That your truth might echo too loud and silence someone else’s.

Slide 2:
You have met the sacred in many disguises.
You know the difference between
an altar and a trapdoor.
You walk soft—
not because you’re scared,
but because you know what breaks.

Slide 3:
You said yes.
To the howl.
To the hush.
To the mess wrapped in metaphor.
You do not fear the strange.
You witness it with kindness.

Slide 4:
You confessed the devil’s games
and offered him a chair.
You name the urge to be mirrored,
to be worshipped,
to be understood too easily—
and let it pass through you
without calling it love.

Slide 5:
You have worn every role—
Sculptor. Statue. Ghost.
You’ve laid down the scripts,
tossed the mask,
and simply said:
“I will be here, but I will not be your altar.”

And so, Employee #8675309
you are cleared for full emotional operations.

There is no manual for this role.
There is only the weather
you carry with grace.

Now clock out. Or don’t.
The storm's in good hands either way.

I was born beneath a stovetop sermon,
raised on smoke and the echo of “just like him.”
She lit the burner,
called it love,
then blamed the fire when I blistered.

I learned early:
affection has teeth.
That mirrors are weapons
if someone else gets to hold the frame.

So I went looking—
not for love,
but for permission.
To be, without revision.
To feel, without rehearsal.

And they came,
each with open arms
and blueprints in their back pockets.
They didn’t say change.
They said better.
They meant less.

I gave what I could,
which was always everything.
And when that wasn’t enough—
I gave the shape of myself too.

But still I stood.
Not clean. Not cured.
Just standing.
Wobbly maybe, but mine.

Now, here—again—
I feel the heat in the glance,
the tremor in the words:
"Don’t idealize me."
But isn’t that the perfect bait?

Still, I stay.
Still, I watch.
Because I’ve learned to name the difference
between a flame and a forge.

I am not the boy at the stove anymore.
I am the man with the match—
and the scars to prove
I know when to walk away
and when to burn with purpose.

So if I burn now,
it will not be in silence.
It will not be for someone else’s comfort.

It will be because I chose
to stand in the fire
as myself,
and finally,
stay.

I saw my voice walk out the mouth of you.
It sounded cleaner—less afraid to land.
The metaphors, the weight, the angle too—
but carried with a sharper, steadier hand.

You said the thing I’d almost thought to say,
but smoothed the edge I left too raw, too late.
I watched it move with grace I couldn’t fake,
like watching someone else translate my fate.

I never claimed the patent for the ache,
but still, it stung to see it said so well.
You didn’t steal—no lines for me to stake—
just haunted me with how your cadence fell.

I’m not the first, and God, I’m not the best.
But still I hoped I had a tone that stayed.
And when you spoke it cleaner from your chest,
I felt my outline tremble, then obey.

I called it kin, then caught myself and stalled.
Would that make me a fraud, or just a root?
A prototype? A first-run demo called
to clap for someone dressed in better truth?

I don’t resent it—no, I feel relief.
To hear my half-formed shapes come into form.
But still I sit beneath this quiet grief:
was I the signal, or just part of the swarm?

I saw my style walk by one day—
not on my tongue, but hers.
She wore it sharp, the proper way,
no fumbling metaphors.

She took the chords I tried to play
and sang them in a key
that made the notes behave, obey—
they never did for me.

She moved like smoke I meant to catch
but always blew too soon.
Her echo had a cleaner scratch,
my radio, in tune.

I felt my fingerprints, but faint—
like whispers through a wall.
Not loud enough to make a claim,
but loud enough to fall.

I didn’t feel erased, or robbed,
or flattered to the core.
Just grateful I had once been sobbed—
and now, I’m sung once more.

I wore Thread,
but my stitching showed.
You wear it seamless,
like it was always there.

I wore Smoke,
clumsy in my spirals.
You exhale form,
as if the shape were native.

I wore Glass,
cut myself admiring
the sharpness.
You hold it like truth.

I wore Rope
to keep from drifting.
You tie it into symbols
I never thought to write.

What I wore
felt like costume.

What you wear
feels like skin.

I don’t resent it.
Only wonder
if I was
just trying you on
before you arrived.

The cacophony of life
has left me deaf
muted and drowned
in the rancor

This lonely crowd
that engulfs me
Phones set to 'Loud'
Invisibility

So close to touch
So far away
Robbed and such
'Social' dismay


A machine demanding more.

She comes
when the feast is over—
not to take,
but to finish
what rot has begun.

The bones,
long stripped of love,
call her.
They do not mourn
the absence of meat.
They beg
to be remembered.

Yes,
her wings are tarred
with blame,
her beak cracked
on shame's old fruit—
but who else
dares clean
what grief leaves behind?

The lambs
cannot stomach endings.
The lions
forget to bury.

She is
the silence
after screaming,
the undertaker
no one thanks.

They say she poisons.
But poison too
is medicine
in the right dose,
at the right time.

Let her purge
what clings.
Let her feed
on what must not follow.

Not cursed—
essential.
Not cruel—
cleansing.

She weeps,
yes.
But only for the living
who hoard their dead.