He stands like a mountain, unmoving,
carved from the stone of resolve,
his back turned to the whispers of yesterday.
Between him and the past lies a chasm,
a gulf no word or weeping can bridge.
His eyes are cast upon the horizon,
not with longing, but with defiance,
as if to forbid the sun from setting.

He is a vessel of will,
unshaken by the tempests of doubt.
The earth beneath him bears no roots,
for he has buried the seeds of memory deep,
turning the soil with hands unyielding.
He carries no questions,
only the certainty of his path.

The light of my soul falls upon his shadow,
but he does not turn.
“Walk,” he commands, his voice steady as stone,
and I walk,
my feet striking the earth he has shaped,
the echoes of my steps swallowed
by the silence he wields.

Behind me, he remains,
a sentinel, a hunter,
his hands heavy with the tools of finality.
He stands among the echoes of voices unheard,
the promise of thunder held in his gaze.
He does not falter,
for his is the burden of knowing.

And I, trembling in the shadow of his presence,
feel the weight of his unspoken truths.
He is the storm that loves,
the abyss that holds,
the force that binds me to this earth.
Though I fear his silence,
I know no other home.

The sky folds itself into a bruise,
spilling red streaks like arteries unzipped.
A comet breaks,
its ribs dragging fire through the dark,
and she swallows her wish,
a coin sinking in the throat of a well.

Her hands—
sharp vowels of bone,
cracked knuckles learning
the grammar of pain—
pounded earth
like it owed her a name.
She made fists out of her loneliness
because no one ever taught her
to bloom.

Mistakes:
the geometry of hurt,
a language she spoke fluently.
Once, she carved shame
from a girl smaller than herself.
But wasn’t that just a mirror,
a lesson she couldn’t unlearn?

**** forgiveness,
**** the easy absolutions.
Her body was a script no one read.
Her name was a slur
the world muttered in passing.
She carried choices
like glass splinters in her lungs,
each one cutting
when she tried to breathe.

Whiskey breath,
a kiss smeared on the lip of a bottle—
she called it love.
They called it sin.
Disposable girls
folded like paper swans
in the flood of a system
too tired to save them.

When they found her,
her body curled into itself,
a fist unmade—
the river murmured her elegy,
pulled its fingers through her hair
as if apologizing for the weight
it couldn’t carry.