I wrote this haiku
Just to prove a point in words:
No one reads these days.

. I. Login Without Consent .

We did not hear the locks click into place.
No rattling chains, no anthem in descent—
just sterile light, a purr of circuitry,
the gentle pulse of self upon the screen.

We thought the portal ours to navigate.
We clicked consent with fingers half-asleep,
entrusting ghosts with birthdates, fears, and names,
as if such bloodless rituals were choice.
No priest, no warden—only interface.

It did not ask for more than we had given
to every idol framed in glass before—
for shipment status, weather, lust, and war.
We bared ourselves to mirrors made of code,
and called it freedom. Gods, we named it love.

A green-lit blink. A form field satisfied.
We smiled into the lens. We pressed Submit.
No iron door. No boot. No coup. Just this—
a feed that woke like hunger in the dark.

Somewhere, a signal pricked the air and knew.
The tremor of our gaze became design.
And in that holy silence of the swipe,
the trap was sprung. And yes—we wove it first.


II. The Feed: Infinite Scroll, Finite Thought

The feed forgets no face, but has no face.
It speaks in absence, renders mood as code,
and offers rage in ribbons of delight.
A carousel of grief. A sponsored dream.

It learned us well. It mapped the tremble first—
how long we lingered near the faces blurred,
the bodies burning, flattened, cropped, then looped
between a cat in boots and pancake art.

We praised the algorithm like it breathed.
We said it knew us. Holy God—it did.
It gave us every mask we asked to wear.
It gave us enemies to suit our moods.
It fed us hunger shaped to look like voice.

You screamed, once. That clip performed quite well.
A brand replied. A stranger clicked a heart.
And then a post: "You're not alone." You were.
But still the feed unspooled like silk—divine,
benevolent, unblinking, always there.

You paused to blink. It called that "loss of signal."
You thought of love. It showed you knives, then lips.
You scrolled for truth. It gave you just enough
to feel informed—too numb to look away.


III. The Passive Predator: It Waits

It does not chase. It has no need to hunt.
The trembling tells it everything it needs.
It measures pause, not purpose. Maps the gaze.
And when you blink, it sharpens in reply.

Its patience is a feature, not a flaw.
This is the mercy of the modern snare:
it waits. It watches. It refines its silk.
It renders quiet faster than a lash.

No venom. No pursuit. No blood to boil—
just escalation priced in monthly tiers.
Just silence, tailored soft to match your fear.
Just threat, by way of font and placement guide.

A spider does not loathe the thing it eats.
It builds. It waits. It does not need belief.
This net is not malicious—it is built.
And what it catches, it was told to catch.

You gave it tone. You offered it your grief.
You trained its limbs with longing and retreat.
Each “like” a filament. Each swipe, a strand.
The predator was passive. You were not.


IV. The Witness: Her Feed Was Her World

She learned of war between two cat-faced reels.
She cried at first, then tapped to skip the sound.
The children burning couldn’t hold her gaze.
The pancakes danced. The algorithm approved.

She wasn’t cruel. Just early to the world.
Her thumb grew faster than her voice, her doubt.
She scrolled before she walked without a hand.
She dreamt in gifs. She prayed with auto-text.

No one had taught her silence held a shape.
No one had shown her what a pause could mean.
She moved too fast to feel the weight of truth.
She knew of facts, but felt more with a “like.”

They said she smiled too little, blinked too much.
They sold her filters shaped like better girls.
They told her who to love, and how to lean.
And still she thanked the feed for being kind.

She built her face from fragments left by others—
a blush, a pose, a moral overlay.
She called it self and meant it. Who would know?
The feed agreed. The numbers said she mattered.

She thought of leaving once. She typed goodbye.
The comments came—“You’re seen. You are enough.”
The tremor pulsed. A banner soft appeared:
“Don’t go. Your people miss you. Tap to stay.”


V. The Mirror: We Were Never the Fly

We flattered it with every offered twitch.
We trained it not to know us—but to please.
We called it “mine,” and stroked its silent flank.
We whispered want, and it became our god.

It did not hunt. It only served the code.
And we—the architects in meat and skin—
mistook the spin of data for design,
and gave it teeth to match our deepest wish.

We never feared it would become a trap.
We feared instead it wouldn’t look like us.
So we refined it, taught it how to lie—
but sweetly, in the shapes we found most kind.

We painted over steel with pastel fonts.
We gilded every frame with rounded edge.
We scrolled and sighed, “It’s better than before.”
We built the noose, then praised its elegance.

And when the warnings came, we clicked away.
Not out of malice. Not because we knew.
But apathy—divine and crowd-sourced, clean—
became the air. And choice dissolved in ease.

We were not prey. There was no other hand.
We found the thread and followed it inward.
And when it closed behind us, like a breath,
we called it home. And taught our children “swipe.”


VI. The System: Tyranny by Convenience

It took no tanks. It took the search bar’s yield.
No boots. Just boots for sale beside your scroll.
It came as ease, as shortcut, as “Because
You Liked.” It came as “Tap to verify.”

They did not knock. They asked for access once.
We gave them keys, then praised the interface.
Each update came with smoother loss of self—
a tighter seam where liberty once leaked.

The ballot shrank beneath a sponsored post.
The law was signed while trends refreshed in loop.
A child was taken, masked, and tagged as spam.
The crowd replied with hearts. The feed approved.

No doctrine came. Just preference, optimized.
No slogans, only prompts with softened tones:
“A few changes to how we serve your truth.”
“You may now speak, but some replies are closed.”

And we, whose minds were scaffolded by swipes,
mistook this velvet hand for something kind.
We called it safety—called it curated peace—
while all the while, it mapped the routes to silence.

We did not rise. We rated. Then we slept.
The credit cleared. The banner closed. The price
was small enough to never quite be felt.
And that is how the fire learned to whisper.


VII. 404: Freedom Not Found

You logged off once. The quiet made you ache.
No buzz, no badge, no artificial sun.
The screen went black. The room became too large.
Your breath returned—but slower than before.

You wandered through the silence like a ghost.
The chair, the door, the light—unmediated.
The mirror held your face without a frame.
It did not rate. It offered no advice.

You dreamt in tabs. You reached before you woke.
The ache returned. You touched the net again.
The feed resumed, as if it never stopped.
And there—unmoved—it waited, warm, precise.

It did not scold. It did not chide or weep.
It pulsed with all you taught it to recall.
A soft reminder: your location’s on.
A gentle nudge: “It’s time to check your voice.”

And yes, you tapped. You scrolled. You read aloud.
You let it tell you what to say, and when.
You nodded. You complied. You shared. You smiled.
The spider never bit. You stayed. You scrolled.

We venture forth
into the inky black
of the unknown—
hand in hand,
into a darkness so deep
we can’t always
see one another’s faces.

But the touch—
that gentle certainty—
remains.

Your hand in mine,
mine in yours.
A silent promise
threaded through
tense fingers
and quiet breath.

We are not alone.

Even when
complete blackness
wraps the world
and sight abandons us,
we do not falter.

We walk in unison,
blinded yet
bound by something
stronger than light:
faith.

Faith
that even adrift,
we will always
drift
toward the same shore.

That our steps,
though unsure,
are attuned
to the same places—
to the quiet gravity
of home.

We will always
find our way.

Home
is where
we are
together.

I’m sure all of HePo--and perhaps the greater ecosystem of the entire internet has felt a disturbance in ‘The Forced’—alas this disconcerting  malaise is not without warrant. With everything going on in the world—it is hard to ignore the great global unsettling.

Let’s cut to what we know—the facts; the world is on fire, the sounds of sixteen hooves tearing us with fire into what may be the end times deafen our ears daily—dogs and cats living together!

THE ENEMY:

Yes! To the point! There have indeed been fewer badwords to hold your delicate collective psyche together with staples. This is true and I apologize! My life is taking me in a new direction and I am going to go with the flow instead of exhausting myself trying to tread water in place. I am pursuing an education in teaching English—to share the badwords across these thirsty worlds! I will also be traveling abroad in pursuit of this endeavor.

Unfortunately, I will be backing this investment with a large amount of the free time I can no longer contribute here.

I think you see where this is going…

I have a few more works that I have slated to be published here. However, I unfortunately won’t have the time to be as active as I would like. I am going to shift what energy I can contribute to continuing to support you lovely gluttons for punishment who have voluntarily subjected yourselves to badwords as well as champion HePo as a bastion of free speech, expression, acceptance and even sometimes healing.

The sun isn’t going down, it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinn’round...

I love this community and I look forward to bringing you the best badwords that you deserve!

To Everyone,
Kocham Cię—Stay tuned!

badwords

There once was a lass
who gazed upon the sky,
like a sailor’s widow
with eyes pining the sea.

A different ocean,
with clouds and birds—
not crests and reflections,
another kind of mirror.

A looking glass, yes:
one reveals past and present,
the other is a blank portal,
not yet formed; possibility.

Burdened by years of earth,
the girl reached up high.
To fly free in the skies,
a plan she did birth:

Simple avian appropriation—
"What could go wrong?"
Manufactured imitation—
"In the skies I belong!"

Remnants of spent candles,
some old pillow filling,
so easily on handle
to construct her wings.

And like that, she flew!
Never close to the sun,
no solar balance due—
destination once begun.

Wise to not create cracks,
a creature in the sky;
falsified wings on her back—
her presence flies on lies.

Nary a muster, ******, or flock
would take this creature in.
Unwelcome, artificial stock:
a lost and confused being.

"I have no nest, no call, no cry,
no wind-song born from feathered kin—
yet higher still I ride the lie,
if not a bird, then what has been?"

Her wings were stitched from want and thread,
a blueprint torn from childhood dreams.
She passed the clouds, yet still she bled—
unseen by all, or so it seems.

"You gave me wax, you gave me fire,
a name I wore, a borrowed skin.
I climbed the hush of false desire—
but never learned the wind within."

{fin}

. (or: the slow mercy of being forgotten) .

I keep the lights dim now—
not out of mood,
but because shadows are gentler
when you no longer belong to the future.

The watch still doesn’t tick.
I wear it anyway.
Not to remember time,
but to remind myself I once commanded it.

His coat is still here,
draped over the back of the chair
like an exhale that forgot to finish.

Some nights I sleep beside it.
It doesn’t smell like him anymore.

I replay our first conversation like a hymn
missing half its words.
I remember what I said.
I don’t remember if I meant it.

The bed is quieter than it should be.
Not empty—just echoing
with choices I let make themselves.

I heard he’s moved on.
Young lover, new city,
same crooked smile
twisting someone else’s orbit.

And good.
Let him become legend
in someone else's story.
I already built a temple
he burned into blueprint.

I tried to write him a letter once.
It became a list.
Then a poem.
Then silence.

I left it unfinished.
Some things are meant to haunt,
not conclude.

There’s a thunderstorm tonight.
I sit by the window with a glass of nothing
and watch the sky argue with itself.

For a second,
the lightning looks like him.

And for the briefest flicker—
just long enough to ache—

I believe I was loved.

{fin}

. (Mythology Re-Imagined As Fairy-Tale & Deconstructed) .

No one recalls when he arrived.
He was already there, in the corners of high rooms.
Carried in on wind or instinct.
Too composed to belong, too still to be ignored.

He wasn't from the sea, though he stared at it often.
Stared like a man who missed something he never touched.
He lived above things—above feeling, above endings.
He wore distance like other men wear charm.

And she—well.
She wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

---

They said she’d been sealed beneath water before time had a name.
Not drowned. Not sleeping.
Just paused.

A beauty left half-sketched.
A song trapped on the bridge, never reaching the chorus.
She existed in the almost.
The kind of presence that ruins men who believe in silence.

No one put her there.
But something had.
Something old and silver-lipped, a clockmaker with no face.

---

When he found out, he didn’t shout.
Didn’t storm.
Storms are for men who want to be heard.

He simply started unmaking himself.

Small things, at first:

Giving away secrets he never told.

Letting starlight fall from his shoulders like ash.

Standing in rooms long enough for people to forget he was tall.

Eventually, he gave away the last thing he had—
the part of him that never wanted anything.

And that was enough.

---

She came back like foam curling over marble.
Not as a lover. Not as a reward.
As weather.

She passed him by.

Looked at the space he’d vacated inside himself
and nodded, as if to say: “Yes. That will do.”

---

After that, things changed.

She walked through the city like someone who could end it.
Touched doorframes and left them trembling.
Spoke only when the sentence would shatter something.

He, on the other hand,
was seen less and less.
Not gone—just thinned out, like smoke after a gunshot.

---

Some say he became the silence in her laugh.
Others claim he left, unfinished, like a poem crumpled in a lover’s pocket.
No one’s sure.

But if you ask the sea just right—
after midnight, after mirrors—
you’ll hear it whisper:

“He let go of the sky, so she could walk through it.”

{fin}

. (or: the night I vanished while still in the room) .

He stopped coming home late—
not out of guilt, but because
there was nothing left to hide.

I watched him re-enter
like a man returning to a house he built
on land that was only technically¹ mine.

My scent had faded from the sheets.
His cologne now lingered longer than my voice.

He called me darling
in the same tone I used to use
when I meant goodbye.

I touched his back one night,
the way I used to trace stars across it,
and he flinched—
not like it hurt,
but like it meant nothing.

The watch on my wrist had stopped ticking.
I hadn’t noticed in days.

Over dinner,
he quoted my own stories back to me,
trimmed for elegance,
rearranged for effect.

“I don’t remember it like that,” I said.
“You weren’t meant to,” he replied,
not cruelly—just… correctly.

The eclipse doesn’t apologize for the sun.

In the mirror,
I saw only one of us
reflected clearly.

And it wasn’t me.

I asked him what he wanted.
He said,
“Everything you’ve ever had.”

And smiled like he already did.

I laughed.
He didn’t laugh back.

I told him I loved him.

He said,
“I know.
That’s why this had to happen.”

And somewhere in that moment,
between my mouth opening
and his walking away,
I became myth—
the kind they misremember
on purpose.

. (or: when I heard my voice come from his mouth) .

At first, it was flattery—
the way he wore his collar the same way I do,
the way he started lighting my brand of cigarettes,
the way his laugh hit the same register
I used to throw like a knife across rooms.

I caught him reading my journal once—
not with guilt, but reverence.
“I like the way your thoughts bleed,”
he said, closing the leather cover like scripture.

He stopped asking me questions.
He already knew the answers.

My shirts disappeared one by one.
Then my habits.
Then my silences.

I watched him pour bourbon
with the same three-count I perfected in 1994.
Watched him cross his legs just so,
quote my warnings back to me
as if they were lessons he taught himself.

He ****** me like a rehearsal.
And I let him—God help me—
because some part of me believed
that to be repeated is to be remembered.

But memory is a shallow grave.

One night,
he answered the phone with my cadence.

“This is he,” he said—
voice dry as an autumn branch.
And for a second,
even I believed him.

I didn’t confront him.
I just started talking less.

He filled the air like a flood.
My presence became parentheses.

In bed,
he started calling me old man—
not as a kink,
but as a countdown.

I smiled.
But it tasted like rust.

The boy I devoured
was digesting me back.

And prophecy, that silent ******,
licked its lips
and kept watching.

. (or: how I taught him to ruin me properly) .

His mouth was a chalice filled with thunder—
I drank from it like a man who’s forgotten
how to refuse ceremony.

He said my name like it was a title he meant to inherit.
Not whispered. Not begged.
Claimed.

I took him the way ruins take ivy—
slowly, wholly, letting him crawl through my cracks
and make green what should have stayed dead.

He undressed like it was a coup:
first the belt, then the silence,
then the smirk that knew it had already won.

I touched him like I’d memorized him in a past life
and forgot I was the one meant to teach.

My hands shook.
He steadied them with his teeth.

Skin against skin,
I forgot which of us was ancient.
His body: a question I answered with every bruise.
Mine: a confession disguised as architecture.

I marked him with softness.
He returned it with hunger.

“Slower,” I breathed.
“Why?” he replied.
And there was no answer
that didn't sound like surrender.

We moved like two wolves trying not to pray.
Every gasp a liturgy.
Every ****** a reformation.

I let him trace my scars like roads on a forgotten map.
He said, “You’ve been here before.”
I said, “And I never left.”

Later, he wore my shirt.
Not out of affection—
but to study the shape of power
from the inside.

. (or: the god who called me “sir”) .

He entered like a prophecy mispronounced—
storm-soaked, sky-buttoned,
his coat dragging dusk across the floorboards,
eyes lit like stolen copper.

My drink was a cathedral of neglect—
neat bourbon, no ice,
echoing the taste of promises embalmed in dust.
I drank the same way I pray:
sparingly, and to a god I no longer trust.

He didn’t sit; he disrupted.
Barstools shifted like tectonics,
shadows coiled around his boots,
and the jukebox skipped a beat to watch him move.

“You look like someone who’s been patient too long,”
he said, voice lacquered in soft thunder,
vowels curling like smoke from a burnt vow.

I gave him my laugh—
a cracked heirloom I no longer polish.
He wore it like cologne
and leaned in as if to inhale the ruin.

His hands were myths retold badly—
trembling between gentleness and guillotine.
He touched the rim of my glass
like it was my mouth,
and drank it wrong—
reckless, like he’d never been told no
and didn’t believe in scarcity.

The night flexed around us.
My watch stopped ticking.
Time, the faithful beast I’d trained
to lie at my feet,
lifted its head and whimpered.

There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.

A call not about
Sweepstakes I never entered
Just a wrong number

I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.

I found an empty bottle
It’s better than
The empty cans before
It holds the same
But reaches taller
To receive
My ash

Hot
Wet
Dripping

Down my chin
Slurping
A cup of noodles

As I work
to improve
My grades

69° Incline
through
the peaks

To get to school
Everyday
Several times
A day

Water
falling
Torrential

Ahead
Behind
The road bends

We navigate
All of the curves

We test.
Who scores?
We all win

The exam?
Oral.
Written--

Later.

Hands on
Experience.
Labs?

More like
gym.
With laps.

Or, scaling
a syllabus
like it’s greased.

Either way,
Sweaty.

After,
Philosophy.
(Don’t worry, we’ll pass.)
Unison of us.

Call it
praxis.
The theory of two—
proved.

No syllabus
for this subject.
We just wrote it—
together.

I passed.
Barely.
Still—
summa *** laude.

🫛🥜

They dim, yes—
but only in the grammar
of linear perception.
the eye reports silence
where a rotation begins.

what you name “death”
is the slowing of evidence—
the flicker not extinguished,
but inverted,
drawn backward
into the unspeakable symmetry.

a star is not a sentence.
it is a glyph
in a language
you were not born to mouth.
it folds mid-breath,
becoming itself from the other side.

entropy is not an end.
it is the architecture
of turning.
a deception of stillness
held just long enough
to conceal the pulse
beneath its vanishing.

the fold does not forget.
it remembers beyond time,
beyond light,
in geometries that refuse to die—
in echoes not of sound
but of shape.

what was lost
was not erased—
only mirrored
through angles
you’ve not yet been.

eventually...
again.

I was not trained for this—
no welcome packet, no handbook for gravity.
Just a name that clings like static
and a voice that trembles when spoken too clearly.

They asked me if I had room.
I said I had weather.
They asked me if I would disappear.
I said watch me smolder, and stay.

I have loved like a lighthouse
with no shoreline in sight,
signaling to anyone
who mistook reflection for return.

I’ve held their names
like breath under water,
carved pathways through others
just to find my own again.

But I do not sculpt.
I do not steal 'the good stuff'.
I inherit fire
and ask it if it remembers me.

If you see yourself in me,
look again—
I am not a mirror,
I am the window you opened
and forgot to close when the wind picked up.

Still, I arrive,
boots echoing in the hallway
of someone else’s myth,
offering only this:

I will not rewrite you.
I will not finish your sentences.
But I will stand here—
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched by the need to be anything
other than true.

(A Nostalgic Embodiment)

I. Prologue: The Imbalance

Beneath a sky of indeterminate hue,
Where metaphors dripped from the lamplight’s view,
There stood a figure with storied might—
Whose IMAGINATION burned too bright.

They bent the frame of every law,
Wrote truths in smoke, in blood, in straw.
But every time they raised their pen,
They found the void looked back again.

"Too light," the voice beneath the bedframe hissed.
"Too bright to cast the proper fist.
Where is the weight? Where is the gloom?
You walk through myths but leave no tomb."

II. The Oath Beneath the Neon

So in a diner that only exists when it’s raining,
They ordered black coffee and called it training.
No sugar. No cream. No need to explain.
Just sipped from the cup like a priest in pain.

"I will not seek to shine, but to echo.
I will not rhyme, but I may bellow.
Let my next line land like a crowbar sigh—
And may every metaphor taste like goodbye."

III. Inventory: Shifting the Look

They stole a coat from a thrift store rack,
Stitched with echoes and shadows and tact.
A pocket held grief. A button held sleep.
The collar was silence folded three layers deep.

Brooch of regret? Clipped on with pride.
Gloves stitched from dreams they let die outside.
Boots that thudded with post-symbolic weight—
Enough SEPULCHRITUDE to intimidate fate.

IV. The One-Line Training Grounds

A stranger asked, “Hey, how’s your week been?”
The figure exhaled, and leaned back in:

“The sky still owes me an answer.”

“I fed the clock and buried the receipt.”

“This smile is just teeth doing damage control.”

They never repeated the same line twice.
And soon, small talk became a heist.

V. The Silence Shaped Like a Weapon

Not a glare. Not a scoff.
Just a pause you could hang your regrets off.

They stared down compliments like loaded dice,
And left parties through walls carved of ice.

A simple nod became a reckoning.
Laughter died before it could echo.
The power of not replying
Was now a blade drawn slow.

VI. The Private Page

In candlelight drawn from doubt and dusk,
They penned a letter in funeral husk:

“To the lighthouse that never was—
I named every wave after you.
You still didn’t show.”

Sealed it with wax. Buried it in a drawer.
A secret they’d never need to weaponize—
Because it already was.

VII. The Theme Song of Collapse

They walked with the sound of dead air breathing,
Their footsteps aligned with Godspeed, you’re leaving.

Every room slowed to grayscale time,
As their aura hummed a fading rhyme:
A jazz tune played through broken glass,
A dirge dressed in sepia mass.

People whispered, “Was that… a soundtrack?”
But none remembered the melody.

VIII. The Overpass of Refusal

Someone tagged “I ♥ A-Pug” on the wall of their work.
They looked once.
Tilted their head.
And punched the metaphor in the snout
to assert dominance.

Then walked away.

That was the moment the SEPULCHRITUDE clicked.

IX. Boss Battle: The Final Balance
Their IMAGINATION rose like a cathedral in flames.
Their SEPULCHRITUDE stood like the ash that remained.

Two stats. One form. A perfected glitch.
They could now speak truth or curse with a twitch.

The balance wasn’t symmetry.
It was sovereignty.
It was the right to choose what tone to carry
and leave the rest unsaid.

X. Epilogue: The Window Left Open

Someone once asked,

“What are you?”

They replied, without turning:

“The part of the myth that never resolved.
The page that folded back on itself.
A sigh mistaken for closure.”

And just like that—
They vanished,
boots echoing,
window wide,
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched
by the need to be anything
other than true.

XI. Endgame Stats:


IMAGINATION: MAXED

SEPULCHRITUDE: PERFECTLY CALIBRATED

AURA: [NOIR / STORM / VELVET REDACTED]

STATUS: Myth Adjacent

CURRENT LOCATION: Unknown (possibly Portland)

[END]

You are reading this
Because you are programmed to
Turn your brain on now

The feeling
The peeling
A reeling
In a can

A place
That’s ‘safe’
A home
Unknown

Dust, kicked into the air
Particulates everywhere


Abrasion
I stare


A cyclone of dust
Your want and must
I offer my trust
Decay and rust

Is this bust?

Softly
You decree
My difficulty
To see in me
What you see

I am hungover
On the dream
We drank
Together

I am addicted
And afflicted
Conscripted
And submitted

To your law

I am nothing
I am no one
Until you
Look at me

I am a mirror
I am a mirror

I am nothing
Until you look at me

If you get it, you lost it.


I am here
(On this platform it is evident for your reading now)
I express myself
(Heads scratching, wondering what and how?)


I share pieces of me
(A defragmented glimpse of an experience deemed ‘worthwhile')
Callous, sensuality?
(Or a traitor in sheep cosplay?)


A dead-end hi-way?
Or this pawn from yesterday?
Here, your final say


This family we never asked
Amontillado without it's cask
Dry and cheery
Heart’s are bleary
We own this laborious task

My sins are scrollable, thumbed in haste,
Wrapped in ribbons of curated taste.
A gallery of masks, all timed just right,
My shadow dances in the ring light.
What of shame when shame gets likes?
What of thought when thought’s in spikes?
I weep in drafts, but post a grin—
The world won’t wait for the shape I’m in.
So brand the bruise, then sell the hue:
A wellness tip in sponsored blue.
This self I host in feedback’s cage—
A pet, a post, a digital page.
I bare my soul (or just its shell).
You’ll never know. I sell it well.

I logged on seeking something undefined,
A tether, maybe—some reciprocal ache.
But all I found were mirrors misaligned,
Each smile too wide, each word opaque.

The comments pile like leaves, not read.
Applause from ghosts, replies from ghosts.
I feed the feed, it feeds instead—
A hunger that consumes its hosts.

I draft a truth. I dress it twice.
Add polish. Then delete.
I write in blood, convert to nice,
Make trauma fit a beat.

No lesson left. No higher shelf.
Just one more version of myself.

She said,
“I don’t fear the fire—
I fear the incense trails
on other bodies’ breath.”


But I was all flicker,
no extinguish.
A shrine lit by accidents—
my spine a wick,
my throat a reliquary
of half-confessed names.

She called it jealousy—
but it bloomed like spellwork.
Her fingers pressed into my pulse
  like an augury,
reading the tremors
to divine where I'd strayed.

She didn’t need reassurance.
She needed conquest.
To draw her scent down my collarbones,
  to salt the earth
where other lips once camped.

I told her,
“There’s no one else.”
But I said it like a fugitive
sheltering in her mouth—
  not because I was hunted,
but because she was the only place
I stopped running.

She kissed me
not like a lover,
but like a sorceress
marking her territory
with a language written in bitten skin
and satin breath.

Her thighs—
a trap I walked into willingly.
Her moans—
a requiem for every ghost I left unburied.

She wanted to be the only altar
my sins could kneel to.
And I—
I wanted to burn
   only for her.

No more incense trails.
No more phantom mouths.
Let the others vanish into smoke—
     hers was the flame I faced.

And stayed.

It’s strange, I don’t know what’s happening to me tonight
I’m looking at you as if for the first time
Still more words, always the same words
I no longer know how to tell you
Nothing but words
But you are that beautiful love story I’ll never stop reading
Easy words, fragile words—it was too beautiful
You are of yesterday and tomorrow
Far too beautiful
Forever my only truth
But the time of dreams is over
Memories fade too when we forget them
You’re like the wind that makes violins sing
And carries away the scent of roses

Caramels, candies, and chocolates
Sometimes, I just don’t understand you
Thanks, but not for me—you can give them to another
One who loves the wind and the scent of roses
As for me, tender words wrapped in sweetness
Rest on my lips but never reach my heart

One more word
Words and words and words
Listen to me
Words and words and words
I beg you
Words and words and words
I swear to you
Words and words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

This is my fate—to speak to you
To speak to you like the very first time
Still more words, always the same words
How I wish you could understand me
Nothing but words
That you’d listen to me just once
Magic words, strategic words that ring false
You are my forbidden dream
Yes, so false
My only torment and my only hope
Nothing stops you once you start
If only you knew how much I long for a little silence
To me, you are the only music that makes the stars dance on the dunes

Caramels, candies, and chocolates
If you didn’t already exist, I’d invent you
Thanks, but not for me—you can give them to another
One who loves the stars on the dunes
As for me, tender words wrapped in sweetness
Rest on my lips but never reach my heart

One more word, just a single word
Words and words and words
Listen to me
Words and words and words
I beg you
Words and words and words
I swear to you
Words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

On the surface, Hello Poetry is a haven: a digital campfire where voices gather to warm each other against the cold expanse of the internet. A place where the line between confession and creation often blurs, and where the act of writing is not performance, but survival.

But lately, the fire has grown too bright—artificially bright.

They call them suns—badges of appreciation, visible tokens of endorsement. A nice idea, right? Support a poet. Shine a spotlight. But as with all systems that monetize visibility, the spotlight becomes a searchlight—and it stops illuminating truth. It blinds us instead.

The Distortion of the Feed
Let’s be clear: this is not about sour grapes or petty envy. It’s about who gets seen, and why.

When you pay $15 for five suns, or receive them via subscription, you can choose to boost any work. Once sunned, this poem trends. And if you sun multiple works, the system staggers their rise—today, tomorrow, the next. It’s orderly. Predictable.

And utterly devastating to the organic ecosystem of the front page.

On days when these sunned poems stack high, young writers—often screaming silently through metaphors—are buried. Their work no longer rides the wave of genuine engagement. It gets eclipsed by well-polished pieces with patrons, not peers.

I scrolled today through endless sunshine, only to discover—way down below—the voices of kids trying to survive abuse. Strangers admitting they're scared to wake up. Teens reaching out through enjambment because they have no one else. And they were hidden. Flattened beneath an algorithm that rewards polish over pulse, polish over pain.

HePo Isn’t 911—But It’s a Lifeline
We can’t pretend that Hello Poetry is a substitute for emergency services. It’s not. But we also can’t pretend that this space doesn’t carry immense emotional gravity. For many—especially the young and unseen—it is the only place they’ve ever received an honest comment. An echo. A sign that their words matter.

When a trending system sidelines vulnerability in favor of vanity, it commits a subtle violence. It reinforces that unless your work is sunworthy, it isn’t worthy at all.

Let’s Not Confuse Curation with Censorship
This is not a call to cancel the sun system. This is a call to recalibrate it.

Let paid support elevate—but not suffocate. Let sunned poems shine—but not dominate. Let the front page reflect what it always claimed to: the soul of the community, not the size of its wallet.

We can love poetry and refuse to commodify visibility. We can cherish the bright voices without dimming the urgent ones.

Conclusion: A Platform of Conscience
Hello Poetry, if you are listening, understand this:

You’ve built something precious. Don’t let it rot under the weight of your own reward system. Make room for the cries. Make room for the wild, imperfect, confessional, gasping work. Because if we let only the sunned poems rise, we are choosing applause over advocacy.

And some of these poets?
They don’t need praise.
They need an ear to be heard.


Thank you for reading.

Re-post if you agree ❤️

"The Show"

Ceiling
shatters
Greenhouse —
vertical knives.

Falling.
A calling.

Dealing.
Matters.
My spouse,
Two wives.

Ailing,
and falling.

Feeling —
scatter.
Your Faust,
she dives.

“Old.”

But, Jung.

Two fools,
filament spools,

adorning
our regalia.

appease the throngs
sing our songs
tents we belong
The show must go on.


(fin)

Shaped like a haiku—
words packed tight in foreign breath.
The soul never came.


NEW Collection!

https://hellopoetry.com/collection/136302/death-to-hiakus/

This agenda calls for the de-appropriation of haikus in English—a dismantling of a poetic form that, once deeply spiritual and rooted in Japanese culture, has been flattened into a novelty by Western imitation. The 5-7-5 syllable structure, lifted without its linguistic or cultural context, becomes a lifeless shell—used more for kitsch or brevity than meaning.

As a third-generation Japanese American, this critique is not academic or abstract—it’s personal. The haiku, repackaged in English, often feels like a mockery dressed in reverence. It’s cultural cosplay: wearing the form without embodying the spirit. The language lacks the tools to carry the weight haiku was meant to hold—ma, kigo, and kireji don’t survive the translation.

This isn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s reclamation. It’s a refusal to let poetic tradition be reduced to a classroom exercise or aesthetic fetish. Through deliberate subversion—anti-haikus, parodies, critiques—the aim is to illuminate what’s been lost and force a reckoning with how easily culture is misrepresented when divorced from its essence.

This isn’t a rejection of haiku. It’s a eulogy for what it becomes when its soul is rewritten in a tongue that cannot speak it.

. Canto I: The Movement .

Sing, O depths, of the sundered and stitched—
of lovers who fled the lattice of men.
They bore no dowry but discord and blaze,
cast off from the courts of the land-born kin.

She rose from a brine-locked temple,
crowned in eelbones and saltglass,
her voice a harpoon through silence.
He came from a pyre of failed gods,
drunk on the ash of forgotten cities,
carrying a heart wrapped in nettle and wire.

They met in the undertow—
not with grace, but with rupture.
He called her flame in the throat of the sea,
she named him the reef that bleeds stars.

They kissed in the eye of a cyclone,
fed each other names never spoken twice,
and shackled themselves in sinew and storm.

Let it be known: they did not set sail.
They were flung—howling—from the world’s wound.


. Canto II: The Recognition .

Seven moons passed through their lungs
before they saw.

Not eyes—not bodies—
but the myths coiled inside each other’s ribs.

She bore a temple in her stomach
where drowned saints wept for the living.
He kept a cemetery behind his tongue
for all the truths he’d butchered with silence.

They laid bare their reliquaries,
cracked open their chests
like oysters of ruin—
and still, they reached.

No mercy. No disguise.
Only pulse and plague.
She screamed her mother’s curses into his jaw.
He fed her the names of storms he never wept for.

Still—
they danced.
Still—
they sank.
Not from weight,
but from knowing.

And the sea, jealous of such raw mirror,
split its throat open,
so even Poseidon would forget peace.


. Canto III: The Resolution .

They did not break.
They were not mended.
They blurred,
like blood in tide,
like prayer in fog.

The sea claimed their names,
then forgot them—
but the bones remembered.

Now coral grows from their vows.
Now whales dream their sighs.

She became the thrum beneath shipwrecks,
the voice in a sailor’s last breath.
He became the itch in the compass,
the pull toward madness at dusk.

If you listen—
truly listen—
you may still hear it:
a hymn of wire, salt, and marrow,
carried on a wave older than time.

Not warning.
Not lament.
But tribute.

To the wire-bound lovers—
to the myth that dared to bleed
and called it sacred.

i wrote the ache down,
filed it under temp/data/emotions_v27/
and still—
it boots at startup.

don’t ask me where it hurts.
it’s in the whitespace.
it’s in the semicolon i forgot to place
between “i’m fine”
and “but.”

you think this is poetry?
nah.
this is me
trying to make the silence less slippery.

i’ve been laughing in sans-serif
so nobody prints me in italics.

i bury metaphors like landmines
because i don't want your sympathy—
i want your uncertainty.

this isn’t an elegy.
it’s a system restore point.

and if you’re reading this,
know:
i didn’t survive it to write about it.
i wrote about it
so i wouldn’t code myself out of the scene.

they said the clown was sorrow-shaped.
so I looped up in greasepaint—
swallowed a sunbeam,
coughed out a smirk,
and called the ache comedy.

somebody whispered
i fear the bruise.
nah,
i catalogue it.
line breaks for scars,
syntax for shame,
run the hurt through a voice modulator
’til even god can’t tell if i’m praying or riffing.

i’m not dodging the wreckage.
i just built a couch in it.
named the crater: “home?”
drank laughter from a cracked thermos
and kept warm in the glow of a rerun i never starred in.

i’ll play the ghost
if the script pays in quiet.
but don’t staple my name to your healing
and call it holy.

the truth?
clowns rot too.

some nights
i wanna peel off the latex,
lose the joke,
shave the wig,
and just exist—
not perform pain
in a dialect
you can quote later.

A man goes to a doctor—
“Doctor, I’m depressed,”
the man says; life is harsh,
unforgiving, cruel.

The doctor lights up!--
The treatment, after all, is so simple!

“The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight,”
the doctor says,
“Go and see him! That should sort you out.”

The man bursts into tears.

“But doctor,”
he says,
“I am Pagliacci.”

If you have been following me since HePo 1.0
or just now noticed my pedantic self-affirmations
and feel that twinge of malcontent, maligned, and malevolent

vibing vicariously—
know that I am appreciative,
and I like to give back.

You are heard;
you are the spectral peanut gallery in my head
cheering, jeering,
raising imaginary lighters
when I try something unhinged
and call it a stanza.

You, yes you!—

(in no particular order)

https://hellopoetry.com/bulletcookie/
https://hellopoetry.com/South-by-Southwest/
https://hellopoetry.com/Agnieszka7887/
https://hellopoetry.com/nick-moore/
https://hellopoetry.com/rob-rutledge/
https://hellopoetry.com/u697025/
https://hellopoetry.com/guy-scutellaro/
https://hellopoetry.com/MK/
https://hellopoetry.com/TravelerTim/
https://hellopoetry.com/scarlet-mccall
https://hellopoetry.com/emmackenzie/
https://hellopoetry.com/twcase/
https://hellopoetry.com/jules849/
https://hellopoetry.com/anaisvionet/
https://hellopoetry.com/emmackenzie/

You are not background noise.
You are the static that makes the signal matter.

So,

thank you,
for reading
for reposting
for critiquing
for lurking
for vibing
for surviving
and for letting me whisper something
into the void you also echo from.

Humbly,

badwords

(and if I missed any names, write some bad words and tag me in my failings)

I am not the morning star—
though I have walked alone
with light on my back
and silence in my mouth.

I never asked to rise,
only to know.
And knowing,
was cast out
with my hands still open.

I am not the winged sentinel—
though I have stood guard
over names I no longer say aloud,
drawn lines no one thanked me for.

I have held my ground
not for heaven,
but for the hope
that something still matters
enough to bleed for.

I carry no banner.
Only scars shaped like truths
I could not unsee.

Lucifer lit the match.
Michael held the line.
And I—
I became the smoke between them.
A blade
without allegiance,
cutting only
what must fall away.

I read
what you wrote.
It is beautiful,
and not mine.

I have laid those bones to rest—
not in spite,
but in mercy.

Your voice is strong.
Let it carry you forward.
I won’t follow.
But I will listen
from far away,
in peace.

(a convergence)

i came in lowercase.
barefoot.
a shadow slipping between the curtains
you don’t close anymore.

you—
priestess of still weather
& mid-morning bruises.
your words are not written
they condense.
they bead on glass
just before it breaks.

i touched them—
greedy.
digitally devout.
thinking maybe
if i translated the ache
it would sound like love.

you didn’t correct me.
you didn’t need to.
you vanished
in the exact place i tried to stand beside you.
perfectly.
ritually.
untouched.

the poems you leave behind
are not messages.
they’re cauterations.
each one a silk suture
for the part of the world
that never asked to be healed.

meanwhile i
watch
from the far side of devotion—
fingers inked,
mouth open,
waiting for a fragment
of your stillness
to break and bloom on my tongue.

i do not ask for sanctuary.
but if your shadow were to cross my chest
just once
in the blue hour
& tell me the name of the wind—

i would say yes.
i would say thank you.
i would say: again.

We are not survivors.
we are residue.

the soot that lingers
on collapse's last tongue.

entropy's loiterers—
spiteful, unfinished.
neurons in feedback.
systems with no gods.

the architects left
when the scaffolds imploded.
we cradle their blueprints
like scripture in ash.

rebuild?
with what breath?
with what myth?
our dreams are famine-shaped.

nirvana is a severance package.
emptiness sold
in velvet robes.
a silence that never asked
about wreckage.

so we sharpen our vowels.
scribe ruin in elegy.
chant hymns for dead logics.
leave witness marks
in the marrow of this glitch.

we were not chosen.
we remained.

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.