light-bound revered idol in the sky
preaches velvet soft respect for all
and  yet, it seems all too wrong
considering all believe opposite
but then call themselves  
              'saved'

do you know  
   who planted          your thoughts —  
          or did they         bloom  
               without asking?

     opinions peel  
         like wallpaper  
   in a house          you've never  
        seen from      the outside.  

               you say:  
        this is right.  
   but who carved        that word  
        into the stone?  
     who handed you            the chisel?

      belief is just  
         fog     in a jar—  
  shake it           and swear  
           it’s       snow.

         who told you  
      fire      was holy  
         but water  
                was wild?

      i heard someone once  
         mistake a noose       for a necklace.  
           it shimmered.  
               it fit.  
                    they smiled.

         how do you know  
      you’re standing         on ground—  
         not        a painted floor  
   that flakes         if you question it?

           do your convictions  
                   creak  
        when you       lean on them?  

    have you ever  
       touched         your thoughts  
             with        bare hands?

       some days  
   i think the sky      is only blue  
        because someone  
              forgot another       color.

       maybe you     aren’t wrong.  
            maybe         no one is.  
         maybe we all  
        just swallowed         different mirrors.

         how do you know  
     the echo        isn’t lying?

               how do you know  
        the voice       is yours?

perhaps only when i can finally be able to blend
with the others, then i can live a life of          ease

i've stepped foot on this land only 4 years ago
and ever since then, have i never not longed to go back
and yet, i wonder if my home would accept me for the way i act
just like the way the others have in this hellscape

the moirai thread life
from it's birth to termina;
the knots of kismet

in the mirror

my body morphs into the male fantasy

bones to muscle, muscle to brawn
skin sturdy, many a mind merit

perfect teeth, the perfect male face
one to please the crowd, to forget
the harmful dysphoria plague

oh, to be the reflection in the mirror

it feels all to awkward
listening in to the chimes
of others as i sit silently
wondering why i even bother
socializing when there is no point
of me including myself within
their laughs and jokes

how long will you be blinded by glimpses of heaven
before you realize the tainted blood of your words?

my words slip soundless into the ground,
pooling at my feet like ripples of rainwater,
vanishing before they touch the ground.

feelings mistaken for harsh statements
and deepest thoughts concealed through
faux fur and a desire for understanding

do you see it?

the ghost of a body still pretending to be whole,
stitched together with breath too shallow to hold,
stitched with nights that never end,
with mornings that never mean anything at all.

do you see the signs?

the moth drawn to the wick,
wings already smoldering,
the glass filling too full, too fast,
spilling over onto hands that do not flinch.

the rope hums its song in the rafters,
the blade dreams beneath the bed,
the sea sings with its mouth open,
waiting, waiting, always waiting.

and oh, if only you could see
how the body answers.

it leans over balconies,
toes curling against the lip of the abyss,
wondering how it might feel to be air,
to be a prayer half-spoken and swallowed whole.
it lingers at the water’s edge,
feeling the pull,
the old song of the tide,
the voice of god in the undertow.

this is how it happens, isn’t it?
not in fire, not in fury,
but in the slow and quiet way a candle drowns in its own wax,
in the way hands stop reaching,
in the way a name turns to dust on forgotten tongues.

why do you watch,
and why do you wait,
if not to stop it?

a simple answer, truly,

"because who can catch a shadow
when it has already learned how to slip
through the cracks?"

she said: "i'm pretty when i cry"
oh , how i relate to her so deep
for when i tear up, i feel weak
and yet i feel so warm and in
my skin, so comfortable and
all the more scarier through
my convulsing body
at ease

there is a temple of iron and glass,
its doors gaping like a beast’s maw,
breathing in disciples,
spitting them out sculpted, shining, sure.
it hums in my ribs,
soft at first, then a roar, then a tremor that unroots me.

i do not enter.

instead, i map myself in the mirror,
fingertips skimming over fault lines,
skin stretched over the wreckage of someone else's war.

i am a house that has been broken into,
windows rattling at the memory of hands
that turned me into something hollow.

they say to run,
but my legs remember pursuit.
they say to lift,
but my shoulders recall the weight of silence.
they say to push, pull, press, forge myself into more —
but all i hear is
small, smaller, gone.

inside, the air is thick,
a storm of clashing metal and breath
from giants who have never learned to fear themselves.
but i am made of glass,
fractured and fogged,
a shape too fragile to shatter again.

they say strength is safety.
but strong was never safe.
strong was fists, voices raised, doors torn from hinges.
strong meant surviving,
but never stopping.
strong meant something was always coming.
strong was never mine.

so i walk past.

i keep my hands buried in the fabric of my sleeves,
let the night swallow me whole,
tell myself tomorrow.

tomorrow, maybe.

but tonight,
i let the ghosts win.

how long will i have to live,
knowing that i am forever
incapable to attaining the
same feats as the other boys
who stand before me?

how long will i have to cope
with the fact that i will never
cure myself of the boney skin
that have distinguished me
from the fit and the brawn?

how long will i feel my envy,
like violent waves crashing
onto the still shore, brewing
inside of me at the meer glimpse
of his glorious "belonging?"

how long will i stay sorrowful
how long will i stoop down to
my lowest level
and how long will i never try
to change, as if
this sadness is eternal?

i finally feel welcome
and yet, it's not
the welcome i
truly want

it's like spike hugs
or poisonous kisses
the midas touch
withering sunlight

i feel almost too much
at ease now, as if
they have never thought
of me as anything other
than weak

they hold my name  
       like a coin in their palm,  
  turning it over,  
       pressing the edges,  
            but never spending its worth.  

their words —
gilded cages,
soft-spoken, silver-lined,
but rust blooms underneath.

i set the table,  
       place their names beside crystal and light,  
            but my own chair—  
                  empty,
                         my place setting,  
                                 forgotten.  

i weave threads into bridges,  
        careful, deliberate —  
              but they walk across  
                   without looking down,  
                         without ever knowing  
                                what held them up.  

i give them weight,  
          substance,  
                presence—  
                        but in their hands,  
                               i am air,  
                                      a thing to be moved through,  
                                                not held.

so i swallow my name,
unspool the thread,
clear the table.

    if they do not know my worth,  
                  then i will keep it  
                                  for myself.

the wind hums like an old song,
but no one remembers the words.
once, they rang clear
soft voices, small hands,
feet bare against the earth,
before the dust turned to ash,
before the air tasted like rust.

the old therebefore,
when the world was wide,
when time was slow,
when a morning could stretch forever
and a night held no teeth.

once, the rain kissed open palms
without burning,
once, the sky bent low enough
to whisper secrets to the quiet.
once, a child could run
without knowing where,
without knowing why,
without the weight of knowing at all.

but the world teaches.
too early, too fast, too sharp
it carves lessons into skin,
shapes innocence into something brittle,
something that bends until it breaks.

the old therebefore,
when monsters only lived under beds,
not in boardrooms, not in uniforms,
not in the quiet spaces between words.

the old therebefore,
when promises meant something,
when love did not carry conditions,
when leaving was a choice,
not an inevitability.

but the past is a house
that no longer stands,
only the bones remain,
only the dust in the empty frame of a door
that once opened to something warm.

and yet
in the hush before sleep,
in the hush before waking,
the wind hums that old song again,
soft, quiet, waiting
for someone to remember.

ever-so distant, light chimes in the dark
   it whispers to me from all of this distance
      messages of a sadness evermore in null light;

there is no true spark in the darkness of night

here, beneath the shadowed bough,
you reach —
a single, red glisten,
heavy with promises.
the weight of the world lies
in your palm,
unspoken,
sweet.

but the skin, oh —
it is too thin, too thin
to withstand
the breaking.

a bite, a ripple
through the quiet,
unhinging time,
unraveling the silence
as your teeth sink
deep.

your tongue tastes
the truth of the earth —
sour, sharp,
forbidden.
and from your mouth
pours
a flood of knowing,
flooded with the weight of seasons,
lost, swallowed whole
into you.

a garden crumbles.
the roots,
now tangled,
burden you —
bent, broken beneath
the fruit you’ve borne.

and so you stand,
in the ruins of choice,
eyes wide, waiting
for the consequence
to catch up.

the apple rests still,
forgotten,
waiting
for your next
bite.

they come to you, arms outstretched,  
            voices cracked open like old leather.  
                    you gather their sorrows,  
                           tuck them neatly between your ribs.  

    you are the light in their storm,  
            the hands pulling them from the water,  
                    the voice that hums, "it will be okay."  

    but when the tide rises for you?  
            when your own chest caves like a hollow house?  

    silence.  
            not cruel, not malicious—  
                    just absence.  

    the weight is yours alone to carry.  
            you, the listener.  
                    you, the healer.  
                            you, the foundation that must never crack.  

    (but sometimes, even stone crumbles.)  

    when will someone pull you from the flood?  
            when will someone sit beside you and say,  
                    not in passing, not out of duty—  
                            but because they mean it—  

                                   "it will be okay."

once, you were small enough to fit inside a whisper,
bones soft as moonlight,
fingers curled like question marks.
the world was too big to hold, so you clung to a name,
wrapped it around you like a second skin.

but nothing stays.

you learned that when your voice stretched,
when your laughter cracked open,
when the mirror started asking questions you couldn’t answer.

your hands,
look at them now
no longer tiny, no longer trembling,
big enough to shield your own eyes,
big enough to wipe your own tears.

the caterpillar never asks why it must split apart,
why the body it knew becomes a coffin,
why change feels like dying before it feels like flight.
but still, it unthreads itself into something else.
still, it breaks to become.

you will not be who you were yesterday.
you will not be who you are tomorrow.
but somewhere between the unraveling,
somewhere in the spaces left behind,
a pair of wings are forming.

it ruptures within me like a sweet abyss;
to you an undesired whole

i am a beacon of hollow skin
of which you have neglected
with your back turned; a
grand shadow cast

i have loved in silence,  
            in the spaces between glances,  
                    in the margins of conversations.  

    i have swallowed my voice,  
            pressed it down like a crumpled page,  
                    let it sit, let it burn.  

    my friends fall into love like skipping stones,  
            weightless, effortless,  
                    rippling into something soft.  

    but i am always the rock that sinks.  
            no hands reach down.  
                    no arms pull me up.  

    "they" call it unnatural.  
            "they" call it a phase.  
                    "they" call it a sin.  

    i call it loneliness.  
            i call it longing.  
                    i call it mine.  

    my heart is an empty chapel,  
            candles burnt to stubs,  
                    hymns caught in the rafters.  

    i ask god if there is love for me.  
            i ask the sky, the stars, the wind.  

    (silence.)  

    i press my forehead to the floor,  
            to the dirt, to the dust,  
                    to the quiet ache in my chest.  

    "please," i whisper.  

    (nothing.)  

    somewhere, a hand is waiting.  
            somewhere, a love exists.  
                    somewhere, i am seen.  

    but not here.  
            not yet.  
                    not now.  

    so i wait.

as the gunmen circle around my fragile corpse
and my ichor seeps out my hollow vessel
my eyes will be forever trained on you
as i ask one final question:
is my love to be
paid in blood?

the men behind the curtains are pulling strings again,
their fingers slick with something thick, something oil-slick black,
something that drips between the cracks in the floorboards
and pools in the mouths of the hungry.

they speak in circles, in ribbons of smoke,
in promises spun from gold-dipped breath.
but when you hold them to the light,
the gold is flaking, peeling back,
revealing the bone-white rot beneath.

they build their cities on the backs of the drowning,
pour concrete over the open mouths,
pat the ground smooth,
call it progress.
they carve their names into marble and call it history,
but the statues still weep at night
when no one is looking.

in the streets, the people move like ghosts,
hollowed out, emptied, made small enough
to fit between the gaps in the system.
they kneel before screens that flicker like gods,
praying in silence to the ones who will never answer.
outside, the neon signs are bleeding,
electric veins pulsing against the sky,
a city built from glass and hunger,
always hungry, never full.

somewhere, a mother cradles a child
who will never grow up to own the air he breathes.
somewhere, a man counts coins that will never buy him tomorrow.
somewhere, a girl stitches up the holes in her pockets
only to find new ones tearing open in the seams.

the ocean is rising,
lapping at the edges of empire,
a quiet, patient animal waiting to take it all back.
the earth cracks open like an old wound,
swallows forests, swallows homes,
spits back the bones.
the rivers run thick with something dark,
something too toxic to name.
they tell us not to drink.
they tell us to be grateful.
they tell us the sky is still blue,
but when we look up,
all we see is smoke.

the men in suits raise their glasses,
laugh over the sound of collapsing ceilings,
shake hands with the same red fingers
that signed the death certificates.
they talk about the future in rooms too high
to hear the wailing below,
too far removed to taste the ash on their tongues.

and still, we wake.
and still, we walk.
we gather what is left,
wear our hunger like armor,
carry our sorrow like torches.
if the sky will not clear,
then let us be the fire
that burns it all down.

who     was the first  
                           to     ask —  
               not pray  
                            not plead—  
                     just  
                             wonder
        where the silence ends?

        ››    did the stars       agree  
                 to be named?  
               or did we just      carve  
                            their deaths  
          into chalk lines—
                     & call it  
              science.  


      what kind of hunger  
                    swallows light  
             & asks for more?

   when we punctured         the sky  
         did it        bleed  
                     or simply  
         sigh?

                   (you never checked.)

         we build      machines  
             with spines,  
          launch them  
                to listen  
                           for gods—  
              or echoes—  
                    or maybe  
     our own guilt.


        she turned her face  
             like a coin:  
                  spent.  
                      flipped.  
                           dropped  
                in a wishing well  
                          full of lies.

        she said nothing.

          (but i swear  
              something grinned.)



          what is curiosity
                 if not  
         the first betrayal?

                  no sword,  
                    just a finger  
                          on the seam  
                  of heaven  
                        tugging—  

                         harder.  


          a child pulls truth  
                  out of a socket.  
               the lights flicker.  
         the room     gasps.  

     nothing burns.  
                 but everything  
                          smells like  
               wrong.



     ›› do we chase answers  
           or just fear  
                  what silence  
                        might say  
                              back?


     sometimes i think  
        black holes  
                are just  
                    mouths  
         tired of listening.  



         and still —  
           we ask.  
               we ask.  
                   we ask.

roots buried deep in the soil,
twisting, clinging,
but always searching
for something just beyond reach,
as if to say,
"i belong, but never fully."

the stem stands tall,
fragile beneath its weight,
a spine bent by the wind,
swaying but never breaking,
holding the promise of growth
that feels too far to touch.

leaves unfurl in silence,
drinking the light,
but never truly satisfied,
reaching for something warmer,
something richer —
but always feeling the cold beneath.

a flower blooms,
beautiful for a moment,
and then fades
petals falling like whispered secrets,
crumbling into dust,
as though beauty was never meant to stay.

fruit hangs heavy with promise,
but when touched,
it rots —
sweetness turning bitter,
a taste of desire gone sour,
left to fall unpicked,
forgotten in the earth.

and yet,
the cycle repeats—
new roots,
new stems,
new leaves,
all reaching for the same sun,
knowing it will never shine long enough.

it     starts with  
            a whisper       no — a            blink,  
the line — no, the edge— curls,
twisting like a thread that won’t stop unraveling
oh, it pulls at something deep,
something dark,
but soft—

            i am standing in the space  
where things don’t hold still,
the air bends — or is it me
bending it?
i try to speak but words bleed
out in
pieces —
broken sentences scatter, like
glass that never shatters.

"does it mean something?"
     i think it does.  
            but how could i know  
                       when time itself  
                    is        no longer  
                        the same?  
         clocks melt,  
                     but they don’t drip,  
                   they hum a sound  
       too far away to hear.  

        the sky— i think it’s still the sky—  
                  twists like a blanket  
           that never fully covers,  
   and underneath, there’s a door, but it doesn’t lead anywhere,  
   only back to a place i’ve been before,  
                  but forgotten how to leave.  

                 am i waiting?  
            or is this waiting for me?  

the mirror is smiling—
i didn’t know mirrors could smile,
or that they had teeth
but it’s there, behind me,
always behind—
trying to speak
but its words
are mine —
twisted backwards,
stretching,
thinning out like smoke.

there’s nothing to hold,
so i hold it all.

the wind learns to whisper,  
                                         then aches to howl.  

                              a shadow drifts, content in its absence,
               tucked into corners where light forgets —
      weightless, wandering, unmade.
              
    the river carves itself smaller,  
          pulling away from the shore,  
                longing to be mist,  
                     to be nothing at all.  

                   but the sky splits open,  
                        spilling voices like wildfire,  
                              hands grasping,  
                                    pulling,  
                                        demanding.

the echo becomes thunder,
the ember becomes blaze —
and the tide surges forward,
craving the pull,
the crash,
the storm.

   to be everything.  
       to be felt.

but fire burns,
and rivers drown,
and echoes stretch until they fade.

so the wind quiets,
                     the shadow folds,
                                      the world sighs —

            and it is still again.

we are all half-formed,
tattered in the mouth of the sky,
footsteps scattered like secrets in sand
half-told stories,
flickering like the last candle before dawn.

where do the rivers begin?
do they unravel in the mind,
or do they stretch in the soil of forgotten stars?
your hands do not belong to you,
yet you hold them as though they are the
beginning of something
but where is the ending,
if endings are just names written on clouds?

i have been inside of nothing,
and it was vast,
expanding like a breath held too long,
too thick for the lungs of anyone to swallow.
do you remember the moment before you knew yourself?
was it light or was it dark?
perhaps it was both
perhaps it was neither.

you are a shape that never fits,
yet you force yourself into corners,
into frames,
into expectations
but the walls are always shifting,
always bending like light
through the cracked glass of your understanding.

and when you look in the mirror,
what do you see?
the reflection has no name,
no shape,
no breath.
it is you,
and not you.
it is a thing that waits to be known,
but cannot be touched.

what happens when the self forgets itself?
does it shatter, or does it simply vanish
into the silence of unspoken words,
into the places where truth never grows,
where light has no color,
where time is only a whisper
a dream that never wakes?

there is a fissure  
            in the air,  

quiet like a breath held too long—
and in that silence,
i wonder if
you see
the cracks
in the way
i speak,
in the way
i bend,
in the way my skin
doesn’t fit
like it used to.

do you notice the way
i speak of “us,”
but never of “me”?

i’ve stitched my truth
in places you won’t look —
it hangs like a forgotten photograph
on the edge of a shelf,
where the light
won’t touch it,
where the air is thick
with questions
too sharp to ask.

            you ask,  
             but not really,  
             and i answer,  
                  but not fully.  

we are strangers wearing
the same names,
as if we’ve all agreed
that silence tastes better
than the truth.
so i hide behind my words,
dressing them in the
language you want to hear,
but they are hollow
like rooms
with no doors.

                 i feel the  
                     weight  
            of your eyes,  
                       but they  
                       are blind  
                 to what has shifted—  
             like a tree growing sideways,  
              the roots pulling away  
            from the earth  
                and the branches  
            reaching toward something  
                     you would never understand.  
      can you hear the hum in my chest?  
        can you feel the tremor  
               in the space between us?  
i have folded myself in half  
       so many times,  
                you can no longer  
                 see the shape of me.  

               but the fear stays,  
                 creeping in the  
             corners of the room,  
                beneath the words,  
            behind the smiles—  
      the distrust is a shadow  
           that no light can erase,  
    because every truth  
              i’ve never spoken  
                is buried in the dark,  
        and i wonder—  
    if you dig deep enough,  
          will you find me?  
          or will you leave me here,  
                    silent, hidden,  
                   waiting for a truth  
                     i cannot share?

they hand you the script before you can read,
press it into your small, shaking hands —
heavy, bound in iron-spined expectations,
dog-eared by generations who never asked why.

they teach you to walk with your shoulders squared,
chin high, voice deep, footsteps firm —
a monument before you are even a man.
they teach you that softness is a sickness,
that hunger is a virtue,
that the only way to be enough
is to be more, more, more—
and never too much.

you learn to swallow silence like whiskey,
bitter but burning,
learn that weight is worn like a crown,
that fear is something you bury,
not something you name.
you learn that strength is measured
in clenched fists and bitten tongues,
in carrying the world without letting it show
in the corners of your mouth.

they call it the masculine dream—
to build, to conquer, to become,
but the dream feels more like a tomb,
more like hands that push you forward
without asking if you want to move.
you wake up every morning and pull the mask on,
the one stitched from responsibility and expectation,
the one that fits too tight against your skin.

there is no room for breaking,
no space to be small,
no air for the boy you once were —
the one who ran barefoot through the grass,
who cried without shame,
who laughed without restraint.

they hand you the script,
but no one tells you how it ends.
only that you must not falter,
only that you must not fail.

only that a man must hold himself together—
even when the cracks run deep.

it drips down like honeyed poison
this dysphoria of mine, a weeping
guillotine;           a mourning blade

who
are you
under the weight
of stolen skies?

when the oceans
are chains,
what will you say?

what will you do
when your feet
slip into the earth,
and the earth
asks:
where are you going?

is freedom  
      a tree?  
           does it  
         grow,  
               or break  
        when you  
           touch it?  
     or does it  
        whisper  
            in broken  
                      syllables?  
                              can you  
                            hear it?  
or do your ears  
      fill with  
           the static  
             of silence?  

do you taste
the fire,
burning in your chest?
or is it
just a name
etched in the walls
of your soul?

     how many  
              shadows
can you count in
a crowded room,
how many hearts
can be broken
before the pieces
ask for their own names?

will you  
           stand  
                in the rain  
                     of forgotten promises,  
  and still say:  
           "i was never part of the storm?"  
    or will you turn,  
                 and claim  
       the sky  
            that was always  
     yours to hold?

i wear
the cloak of expectations,
stitched from the sins of others,
woven tight like fig leaves —
covering the shame
that is
not mine.

they say,  
    be this,
          be that,
    carry the burden
                   of the world —  
              like the mount of uhud,  
                     heavy,  
                          and unyielding.  

but when i look
into the mirror,
it shatters,
like the moon split asunder,
pieces scattered
across the floor,
beyond repair.

    “just be happy,”  
                      they say,  
        “be perfect,  
                   be the image,  
                        the reflection.”  

but my soul
feels like a vessel,
empty,
lost,
waiting for the rain,
as if i am the dry earth,
thirsting for the mercy
of a single drop.

                                          i reach for the stars —
                                          but my hands
                                          can never grasp
                                          the heavens.

i look for the light,  
                  but the darkness swallows it whole,  
                  and i wonder —  
                   if i’ve stopped looking,  
              if the search  
                       was always  
                        a lie.  

     they say,  
              to be enough,
                 but the world  
                 only knows the hunger —  
                  the longing for something  
                          beyond reach.  

how many times,
must i lift my heart
like the mountain,
and yet,
still
fall short?

                            have i not been enough?
              am i not enough?
                            or was i never meant to be?

the ink of my life
is written on fragile skin,
prayers said in silence —
but no one listens anymore.

but when the world turns away,
i remain here

                                                                      lost,
                                                                 empty,
                                                        wondering —


                                                        am i enough?

the mirror melts.  
  no — not melts, but pools,  
         a golden spill of reflections,  
a syrup-thick mirage     clinging to my skin.    

              i step forward,    
      (or maybe backward?)    
  my footprints fizz like swallowed stars,    
                 glimmering,  
       dissolving into the amber flood.    

who am i today?

             a prism refracting selves,    
   each face a sugared echo of the last.    
          i touch my arm,    
    (but which one?)    
                my fingers bloom into moths,    

their wings dipped in honey,
their voices whispering my name
in fifty-thousand flavors.

i am not one.
    i am not many.  
            i am—    

                  (i am?)

the river laughs,  
      its voice thick with golden light,    
            dripping into my throat,    
                 seeping into my bones,    
     rewriting the marrow into something    
           sweeter.

molded,  
      measured,  
            carved.  

           (cut down to size.)  

    a rib for eve,  
          a waist for venus,  
                 a bust for dionysus,  
                        a jaw for adonis.  

what is a body
if not a mirror?
if not a stage?
if not a cage?

    they say,  
             make yourself small.  
     they say,  
             make yourself more.
     they say,  
             make yourself worthy.  

break bone,
burn flesh,
bind, pinch, peel, pull —
closer. tighter. smoother. thinner.
broader. harder. taller. stronger.

     (they will still call you too much.)  

a scale is an altar,
a waistline a prophecy,
a mirror a judge,
a calorie a sin,
a muscle a shrine.

   and you?  
          a lamb—  
               fattened, then starved,  
                    offered up,  
                        to the god of empty stomachs,
                        to the god of unyielding fists.

who taught you to love your body
only when it is leaving you?

    who told you hunger was holy?  
    who told you pain was power?  

who decided a man is only worth
the space he conquers,
and a woman is only worth
the space she does not take?

and why did we listen?

the air warps around me,
thick as honey,
slow as an apology that never comes.

i step in

a ghost with bones too solid,
a statue mid-topple,
something left in the sun too long.

the voices tangle like vines,
threading through spaces i don’t fit,
winding around my throat,
pulling too tight when i try to speak.

i hold my hands like they belong to someone else,
porcelain and brittle,
too smooth, too still,
waiting for someone to mold them into a shape
that makes sense.

the silence swells in my chest
a balloon too full,
a scream with no teeth,
a door that won’t open no matter how hard i knock.

i smile like it’s an answer.
i nod like i understand.

i stand in the center of the room
like a misplaced chair,
waiting for someone to sit,
waiting for someone to move me,
waiting to disappear.

who among you has never let
the blood dry on your hands?

              does the shepherd not  
                          break the lamb’s leg  
                                               so it will follow?

does the potter not
drown the clay
before shaping it?

  tell me,  
      is the lion wicked  
              for its teeth?  

     or the serpent  
                for its tongue?  

                                                      ­  if the temple is built
                                          on stolen stone,
              does the prayer still rise?

if the offering is paid for  
            in hunger,  
                    does the incense still please?  

tell me,
is the knife holy
if it never cuts?

           is the river good
    if it never drowns?

              was judas ******
              for thirty silver —
              or for the kiss?

was peter saved
for love —
or for fear?

   if i call you righteous,  
              will you thank me?

if i call you wicked,
will you deny me?

   if i tell you there is no difference,  

                    will you crucify me too?

the plates gleam,
white as bone,
polished smooth like they have
never known hunger.

the chairs are full,
backs straight, hands folded,
laughter soft as candlelight.

i press my fingers to the rim of a glass
and pretend my touch does not leave smudges.
pretend i am not starving for something
that will never be offered to me.

the air hums with voices i do not recognize,
language slipping through my fingers
like silk, like water, like something
that was never mine to hold.

they do not notice me.
i am a shadow at the feast,
a hunger that will not be named,
a knife laid beside an untouched plate.

the table is set,
but not for me.

is it always this loud,  
         or have i just started     listening?

the air        pulses—  
      not from sound,  
               but from        expectation.  

      what if i forget how to breathe  
            without someone watching?  
     what if i already have?  

the ceiling sweats.  
      the walls lean in.  
           does the room know  
              i’m trying not to fall apart?

my skin        buzzes,  
         not from fear,  
                 but from      waiting for it.  
       for the sharp thing,  
                   the wrong word,  
                        the slow blink that ruins everything.  

why does silence feel like accusation?  
      why do voices sound      like mirrors?

       i blink,  
            and the world repositions—  
       not violently,  
              just enough to unseat me.  

          the chair shifts under my weight.  
     am i too much again?  
                or is it just the thought of being seen  
                         that makes me so?  

every word i speak  
         frays at the edges,  
     like it's trying to escape me mid-sentence.  
            are they still listening?  
                  were they ever?

    my heartbeat stutters—  
         not in fear,  
               but in     anticipation  
                        of fear.  

      there is no danger here.  
            then why does the door  
                 look like a verdict?

i want to ask for help,  
         but the words feel  
                  like spilled glass—  
                         how do you pick them up  
                                 without bleeding?  

         and if i’m always breaking,  
     who would stay long enough  
           to gather the pieces?

        how much of this  
              is just being alive?  
        and how much  
                is whatever i’ve become  
                       while trying to hide it?

     what is the name for this feeling—  
             not drowning,  
                   not burning,  
                        just shaking  
                              beneath still water?


       when does the body  
             stop mistaking its own breath  
                        for danger?

if a tree falls and no one hears it,
does it rot slower?

does it claw at the earth, desperate to be seen
as something more than a pile of splinters?

does it hold its breath,
waiting for footsteps,
waiting for someone to count the rings
inside its ribs and say,
"this was once here."

if i carve my name into the wind
and let it drift softly into the air,
will it hold?

or will it slip between fingers,
another whisper lost before it can reach a mouth?