It’s getting louder in the silence
And even harder to breathe,
My heart wretches with a hunger
And I’m desperate to feed.

It should have been so easy,
Growing life from a seed,
Watching you grow where I could never follow
Has taken its toll.

Scars are etched upon my soul,
Lesions pressed against the brain,
I don’t even dream any more,
The day they took you from me
Was the day everything changed.

It feels like I’m lost at sea,
Floating on wishful hope
And tree bark memory,
As the pine sticks through my flesh
Back riddled with all their blades
I’m bled out to feel these sharks
Of my doubts encircle me.

What could have been,
Had I known then,
How to be a better man,
Instead I—
Feel the weight of burden
Anchor me to this boulder
Where carrion comes to pick me clean.

It’s getting louder in the silence
Desperation in the form of a plead
Seethed through every exhale
When it’s the loss of you I breathe.

Lost like a poltergeist in purgatory
Shuffling in this flesh husk like a zombie,
Loveless, I can’t , feel you
Loveless, I can’t , feel anything at all.

It should have been me,
And I want you to know,
If I could trade places,
I’d rot in the earth,
Faded like paper pulp after the rain,
Scatter my ashes into the sea,
And watch as the sharks of my doubts
Encircle me.

The riptide fell
It probably felt unwell
One toppled on another
Few weeks later
And somehow a tsunami awakened
The riptide is back
Tired
And running away
Hoping to not get consumed and torn up
By the tsunami again

Maybe I am ugly,
It’s a fair point.

I’m not nearly as handsome,
After giving up the ghost on my hair,
After years of abuse to my joints,
The combat sports and bruises,
Broken bones, contusions.
Scars and reconstructions.

Maybe I’m not a particularly pretty packaged cup of tea,
But I’m plenty strong,
Built ford tough and could run through you Like a Ram.
I’m olive toned marble
With a slick tongue.

I am endowed in ways Aphrodite blushes
And taught just as well how to wield its power
I need not look like vin diesel
To know that I am furious and rarely fast.

I’m not an ogre
Or an incel
Ungrateful for life
Or stuck inside my own shell,
I’m half Sicilian and proud,
Part Mexican with a dah of Irish,
Green eyed, and hot tempered
Black belt, and fists of fury
Gun lover , and whiskey shooter.

I’m an artist,
Photographer for funsies
Love to camp, hike weekly
And I earn plenty of monies,
Clicking on a keyboard,
Penetrating weaknesses ,
Like chess boards
While coaching my underlings
New pawns I push forward.

So yeah,
Maybe I’m ugly,
But what I have in spades
Is the fact that when you call my name
It’s a statement of fact
I’m more man than most claim to be,
And I don’t try to dominate
It’s what’s bred within me

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.