the world’s got a habit
of chewing you up,
spitting you out
like a bad cigarette.
it doesn’t care
how many dreams you’ve got,
how many scars
you’ve earned.

people will smile at you,
talk about hope
like it’s something you can hold in your hands,
but they never mention
how it slips through your fingers
like sand
and disappears
before you can even grab it.

they tell you
there’s always a way out—
but you know better,
don’t you?
the exits are all locked
and the keys
are hidden in places
nobody bothers to look.

so you drink,
you smoke,
you **** up again and again,
and maybe you smile,
but it’s a lie,
a desperate lie,
just like everything else
they told you.

the truth?
the truth is,
no one’s coming to save you,
no one’s going to rewrite the rules,
no one’s going to put you back together
after you break.

you’ll just keep going,
because what else is there?
and the world will keep spinning,
chewing,
spitting,
until you’re nothing
but dust in its mouth.

the first time her lips met mine
was like a war ending,
like the moment the bomb hits
and the smoke curls up,
and for one second,
the world forgets its weight.

it wasn’t soft.
it wasn’t polite.
it was heat,
and teeth,
and a hunger I didn’t know
I’d been starving for.
her hand brushed my waist
like a secret,
fingers tracing the curve of my body
like she was trying to memorize
the taste of me.

we fell into it—
the kiss,
the touch,
the way our bodies came together
like they’d always known
where they belonged.
I wanted to hold it,
wrap it around me like a blanket,
press my face to her neck
and never let go.
her breath was warm against my skin,
her heart beating louder than mine,
and in that moment,
nothing else mattered.

but then—
the door slammed open,
the world barged in,
with its judgment and its fists.
the voices rose,
too loud,
too angry,
too full of things we never asked for.

“what the hell is this?!”
they screamed.
and I looked at her,
hoping she’d hold me,
hoping she’d fight for us.
but she pulled away,
eyes wide like I was a stranger,
like I was the one who’d made her
forget her place.

“no, no, no,”
she screamed,
shaking her head,
her voice cracking like glass.
“it wasn’t me—
she made me do it!
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want her.”

and every word she said
ripped me open,
every syllable was a knife
twisting into the space
we’d just built between us.
I stood there,
frozen,
feeling the weight of her denial
crush everything I’d felt.

her eyes,
her beautiful eyes,
didn’t look at me anymore.
they looked at the floor,
at the people who’d come to take me from her.
and in that moment,
I realized how small I was—
how easy it was for her to forget
the taste of me,
the heat of me,
how easily she could sell us out
for the sake of safety.

I didn’t fight.
I didn’t scream.
I just turned,
and walked away,
my lips still burning from her kiss,
but knowing it was already dead.

I woke up again today.
the way a dog might wake up
to a kick.
not because I wanted to,
but because the hours don’t wait
and neither does the rent,
and no one cares
if you spend the morning drowning
in yesterday’s whiskey
and last year’s regrets.

the sun drips through the blinds,
thin and pale,
like it knows it’s wasting its light on me.
I light a cigarette,
watch the smoke twist,
and I wonder
how something so fragile
can disappear so easily—
then realize,
I’m not that different.

there’s a woman I loved once.
she had hair like wildfire
and eyes like a question I didn’t know how to answer.
she told me I was a storm
she wanted to walk into,
but she didn’t know
the rain never ends.
she packed her things on a Tuesday.
I tried to stop her,
but my hands were too heavy with all the things
I should’ve said when it mattered.

the world keeps moving forward,
dragging me behind it
like some forgotten wreckage.
I smile at strangers,
say I’m fine when they ask,
but every mirror I pass
whispers the truth:
you’re breaking
and no one even notices the sound.

some nights, I sit in the dark,
just to feel it wrap around me
like the arms I lost.
I drink until I forget,
and I drink until I remember.
it’s a cruel, stupid game,
but it’s the only one I’ve got left.

the thing no one tells you
about being alive
is that sometimes you’re not.
sometimes you’re just walking,
talking, breathing proof
of everything that’s gone wrong.

and when they ask me what I want,
what I need,
what I’m looking for,
I don’t have the words.
because what I want
is to go back,
and what I need
is for the pain to mean something.

but what I’m looking for—
God, what I’m looking for—
is the door out of this room.

and maybe,
just maybe,
someone who notices
I was even there
to close it.

I’ve met the night a hundred times—
She carries no remorse,
Her silver hand upon my chest
A silent, steady force.

Her breath is like a frozen hymn,
Too soft for earth to hear—
Yet chills my soul, and bends my will
Until it disappears.

I sought to end the endless ache
With shadows on the wall,
But shadows only shift and shrink,
And answer not my call.

There is no mercy in the stars,
No kindness in the frost—
Yet some persist to claim that light
Redeems what has been lost.

End me, then, O faithful dark—
Unbind this brittle form,
And leave me not to linger here
Through one more bitter storm.

Some people glide through life—
clean suits,
straight spines,
their hands untouched by the dirt
we call home.

And then there’s us.
We shuffle, we stumble,
we laugh too hard at bad jokes
and spend too long staring at walls
that don’t answer back.

Our lives are broken bottles
held together with tape—
still sharp, still dangerous,
but ours.

And if we ever make it—
if we ever find a way to rise,
we’ll leave claw marks on the edge
to remind them
we were here.

I caught myself in the mirror -
not really me,
just someone wearing my face.
they moved like a bad actor,
lines all wrong,
hands heavy,
feet borrowed.

I lit a cigarette,
watched the smoke curl
into the kind of shapes
I wish I could slip into.

the sun sets quietly,
as if it’s tired of being seen.
I wonder if I‘d do the same
if I could.

It’s not the big things—
not the promotion,
not the breakup,
not the years that pile on like
books you’ll never read.

It’s the small ones.

The way coffee tastes different
when you drink it alone.
The moment you realize the sound
of your own laugh feels foreign.

A dog barking two blocks down.
The scent of someone’s cologne in the wind,
and how it doesn’t belong to anyone you know.

Life collects itself in little drops,
small enough to ignore
until you’re drowning.

he said:
“there’s a point where you stop
believing in miracles.”
he sat down,
pulled a flask from his jacket,
and took a long drink.

“but the funny thing is,” he said,
“you keep waiting for one anyway.
like some part of you
didn’t get the memo.”

i watched him stand up,
sway a little,
then walk out the door.
he left the flask behind.
it was empty.

The world’s a lot less kind
than I thought it’d be.
But I‘m still here -
broken, tired,
with a grin on my face
and a smoke in my hand.

they don’t wait for the grave.
they start digging
the moment you clock in.
a little deeper every day—
beneath the fluorescent lights,
beneath the bills piling up,
beneath the weight of everything
you were supposed to be
but never got around to.

they bury you early.
in offices,
in traffic jams,
in cheap apartments with walls
thin enough to hear your neighbors fighting.
in the same bar every Friday night,
where the jukebox keeps playing the same sad songs
and the bartender pours another round of regret.

they say,
“this is just life.”
and maybe they’re right—
maybe you’re supposed to carry
that invisible coffin on your back,
marching forward
like you don’t feel it getting heavier.

I knew a woman once.
she refused the shovel.
quit her job, sold her car,
got on a bus going anywhere.
people called her crazy.
but she sent me a postcard
from some small town by the ocean.
she said the air tasted like salt,
and she’d never felt more alive.

they bury you early.
unless you fight.
unless you throw the dirt back in their faces
and run like hell toward something,
anything,
that doesn’t feel like dying.

his hands are cigarettes,
burning slow across the keys.
he plays like he’s trying
to empty something out of himself,
something heavy,
something he doesn’t trust
to speak aloud.

the crowd doesn’t notice.
they drink their whiskey,
laugh at their own jokes,
and hum along like they
understand the chords.

but I watch him,
the way his fingers tremble
like they’re afraid
of what comes next.
he’s in love with the piano,
or maybe he’s just stuck with it,
like a bad marriage
that refuses to end.

the music is sharp
and it hurts in all the right places,
like stepping on broken glass
but still feeling alive.
I want to tell him:
you don’t have to play for them,
they’re not listening.
play for yourself.
play to make the ghosts shut up.

but I don’t say anything.
I just watch him finish his set,
pack up his misery,
and leave the room
quieter than he found it.

the playground’s empty.
the factories aren’t.
the clocks keep moving
but no one grows up -
they just get swallowed,
one
        shift
                 at
                      a
                         time.

He said:
„Life is a coin,
  one side sorrow
  the other hope.“
Then he flipped it.
It never came down.

the world hums like a bad refrigerator,
louder when you’re trying to sleep.
I sit in this rotting chair,
watching the ash from my cigarette
grow longer, thinner—
a ******* metaphor
I won’t write down
because metaphors are for fools
with something to prove.

the landlord’s upstairs
stomping out his bad marriage,
and the cat’s staring at me
like I’m supposed to fix it.
like I ever fixed a **** thing.
the whiskey’s out,
the bread’s moldy,
and there’s no mail
but bills that
have already lost their patience.

I knew a woman once,
beautiful in the way
that broken glass can be beautiful
when the light hits it just right.
we didn’t talk about love,
but the bed remembered us,
the walls learned our names.
she left
the same way the good ones always do—
quietly,
like the sound of a train
you only notice
after it’s gone.

the ash falls,
finally,
into the grave of the tray.
and I think,
hope is like a stray dog—
it keeps following you
no matter how many times
you kick it away.

She sipped her drink,
eyes darting around the room,
like she was looking for something
she didn’t want to find.

I sat next to her,
close enough to hear her breathing,
close enough to feel the silence
where her words should’ve been.

When her hand brushed mine,
she didn’t pull away,
not right away,
but then she laughed too loudly,
like it never happened.

I let her have the lie.

It hits you in the strangest places—
at the gas station
when the guy in front of you
fumbles with his change,
cursing under his breath like a man
who’s been fighting a war
you’ll never know the name of.
Or in the supermarket,
when you catch a glimpse
of a tired woman
staring too long at the frozen peas
as if they hold
some secret answer
to whatever the hell is breaking her.

And suddenly,
you feel it:
the sheer weight
of their lives.
People, everywhere,
carrying things
you can’t see.
Silent burdens,
private heartbreaks,
tiny wars fought behind closed doors.
It’s like looking into a hundred windows
on a cold street at night,
each one glowing
with some story
you’ll never get to know.

You try not to think about it,
but it’s always there—
the quiet truth
that everyone
is dragging something behind them.
The man who cuts you off in traffic
isn’t just an *******;
he’s late for a job
he hates,
or maybe he just found out
his kid’s in trouble again.
The woman who snaps at the cashier
has been holding back tears all day,
and now,
for reasons she can’t even explain,
she’s breaking down
over a bag of groceries.

It makes you feel small,
like your own pain
is just another drop
in a sea that’s already drowning everyone.
But it also makes you feel something
you don’t want to admit—
a raw, aching tenderness
for this wreck of a world
where everyone is limping
through their own private hell
while trying to smile
through it all.

And here’s the kicker:
you’re one of them too.
You lie awake at night,
wondering if the people you hurt
still think about it,
if they’re staring at their ceilings
the same way you are,
asking themselves
why nothing ever seems
to fit right.
You tell yourself
you’ll be better,
you’ll try harder,
but deep down,
you know
you’re just another story
playing out behind some window
no one’s looking into.

It hurts, doesn’t it?
To know that everyone is real,
that their lives are just as tangled,
just as ****** and raw as yours.
To know that behind every glance,
every passing face,
there’s a whole world
of love and loss,
hope and ruin,
and you’ll never be able
to touch it,
to truly understand it.

Maybe that’s why
we keep going—
because we’re all stumbling
through the same darkness,
hoping,
praying
that somewhere along the way,
someone will see us
through the glass,
and maybe,
just maybe,
they’ll understand
that we were never
just passing faces.

the alley smelled like **** and failure,
the way it always does.
there was a guy slumped against the wall,
his face pale,
his arms full of track marks.

i lit a cigarette,
offered him one,
but he shook his head.
“trying to quit,” he said.
i almost laughed,
but didn’t.

he looked at me,
his eyes hollow as an old shoe,
and said,
“you think it’s worse to die slow
or fast?”

i didn’t answer.
he smiled anyway,
and said,
“doesn’t matter.
either way,
they still call it living.”

It hits you when you’re not looking.
By the cantaloupes, maybe.
Or in the cereal aisle.
Life’s absurd, isn’t it?

A stranger’s kid is crying,
and the old man next to you
is staring at the ingredients on the soup can
like it holds the secrets of the universe.

You’ve been there too—
in the waiting room of life,
looking for meaning
between aisle four and five.

You buy the bread, the milk, the eggs.
None of it will last,
but you tell yourself it will.

And on the way home,
the sun will break through the clouds
just for a second—
and for once,
it’ll feel like enough.

Flames lick the edges of a city that never sleeps,
where dreams are charred, and hope smolders in the ash.
The night is a canvas of ember and smoke,
painted by hands unseen, indifferent.

In the alleys, shadows dance to the crackling tune,
while sirens wail like distant, mourning lovers.
The air, thick with the scent of despair,
chokes the whispers of those who dare to breathe.

Neon signs flicker, their gaudy promises
melting away in the heat of reality.
The boulevard, once a river of aspirations,
now a barren wasteland of forgotten footsteps.

Yet amidst the inferno, a lone figure stands,
eyes reflecting the chaos, unblinking.
A poet, perhaps, or just a fool,
scribbling verses on the back of a scorched receipt.

“Fires, fires everywhere,” he writes,
“and not a drop to douse the soul.”
The city burns, but he remains,
finding beauty in the blaze,
and solace in the ruin.

it starts with the ritual—
the line drawn neat,
a surgeon’s precision,
your hands shaking
but steady enough
to carve the moment.
the dollar bill rolls up,
tight as your chest,
your lungs bracing
for the burn
that always comes
too fast,
too much,
but never enough.

it’s like snorting the edge of a knife,
sharp, raw,
your brain lights up,
every nerve screaming
hallelujah
and oh, God,
at the same time.
your teeth clench,
your jaw locks
like a rusted door.
the world is too bright,
too loud,
but for a moment,
you are invincible,
a God
built on powder and lies.

then it settles in—
slow, like regret,
like a lover slipping out
in the middle of the night,
and you’re left
with the silence,
the empty mirror,
the body you no longer own.

you tell yourself
you can stop—
later.
next time.
tomorrow.
but the tomorrow you picture
isn’t real.
it’s just another lie
you snort,
crush,
chase.

the powder doesn’t fix you—
it just smooths the cracks,
fills the holes
for a moment.
but you can feel them widening,
feel yourself
slipping through,
and still,
you go back,
because at least the fall
is familiar.

There’s streets, streets, streets, streets,
Endless streets ahead of me,
Black tar bleeding into cracks,
Stretching farther than eyes can see.
They go on without mercy,
without a name, without end,
Just more streets, streets, streets, streets,
No turning, no bend.

I walk ’til my soles are thin
like paper peeled from stone.
Feet dragging through the dirt,
‘cause no one walks alone.
There’s bottles smashed in gutters,
and faces in the rain,
All strangers to each other,
tied together by the same **** pain.

Keep walking, man. Just walk.
Don’t stop for the moon.
It’s a liar like the rest.
And dawn? It’s coming too soon.
A cigarette burns like hope,
and ashes fall like dreams,
On these streets, streets, streets, streets—
nothing’s ever what it seems.

There’s streets ahead and streets behind,
and neither way feels right.
But still you march, just march along,
in the dead and sleepless night.
Through alleys of the hopeless,
and avenues of pride,
It’s streets, streets, streets, streets,
and nowhere left to hide.

So walk, man, just keep walking.
That’s all that you can do.
Because streets don’t end,
they only stretch—
And somehow,
so do you.

if I die,
it won’t be with roses pressed against my chest
or candlelight flickering
like some poet’s dream of a clean, quiet ending.
no—if I die,
it’ll be on a Thursday when the trash hasn’t been taken out,
the rent’s due,
and the world just keeps dragging its feet
through dust and noise.

will you write about me then?
will you scrawl my name in the margins of your mornings,
squeeze me into the spaces between your coffee and silence?
or will I vanish,
like the half-smoked cigarettes we used to leave
burning in old ashtrays,
forgotten until it was too late?

I don’t want the pretty lies,
no poetry about sunsets or fate.
just say I was here—
say I burned bright,
not with brilliance,
but with the stubborn flame of a bad idea
that refused to die.

say I laughed too loud in empty rooms
and drank too much in crowded ones.
say I cursed at the world
and loved it anyway
in the same breath.

there’s a kind of beauty in not being remembered
by statues or verses.
I never wanted to be carved in stone,
only in the raw pulp of memory—
messy, torn,
something you’ll think of
only when you hear a certain song
or smell cheap whiskey in the air.

if I die,
don’t put flowers on my grave.
put words on a page,
put stories in the air,
put that wild, laughing thing I was
back into the world,
if only for a moment.

but if you can’t,
if life gets too full of its own noise,
I’ll understand.
because dying is simple;
it’s the living that gets complicated.

it sits in the closet,
folded like a bad memory.
I haven’t touched it in years—
but it touches me.
every night,
every time the air feels too heavy
against my skin,
it comes back.

his hands.
God, his hands.
they were everywhere,
moving like they owned me.
they gripped my hair—
tight, pulling, claiming,
and I can still feel them
dragging across my cheeks,
brushing my lips.
it wasn’t gentle.
nothing about it was gentle.
they pressed into my neck,
lingering too long,
and slid down to my belly,
my thighs—
fingers greedy,
leaving trails that still burn.
it wasn’t just touch.
it was a stain.
it sank into my skin,
and no matter how hard I scrub,
it won’t come out.

that night,
I slept on my friend’s couch.
I curled up,
a shell of myself,
and stared at the wall.
they didn’t ask
why my voice was quieter,
why my hands were shaking.
I wanted to scream—
but the words felt
as useless as I did.
I just laid there,
praying for sleep,
praying for silence,
praying for the memory of his hands
to let me go.

but it never does.
his touch is still here,
woven into the fibers of that shirt,
lurking in the shadows of my reflection.
even when I’m alone,
I’m not.
his fingerprints are on me,
inside me.

and the shirt—
I can’t wear it.
every time I try,
it tightens around my neck,
like he’s behind me again.
it doesn’t feel like fabric anymore.
it feels like him.

I want to throw it away,
but I don’t.
as if keeping it
keeps it real.
as if throwing it away
might make me forget
that it happened.

but I never forget.
I can’t forget.
because he’s still here,
in the way I flinch,
in the way I avoid mirrors,
in the way I still
can’t breathe.

the night pressed in,
heavy and mean,
the way it always does
when you’re sober long enough
to feel everything you’ve been running from.

i sat in the kitchen,
a cigarette burning in the ashtray,
the smoke curling up
like the ghosts of all the things
i used to believe in.

there was a cockroach on the floor,
big, slow,
moving like it had seen worse days than me.
i thought about smashing it,
about what it must be like
to live your whole life
dodging shoes and poison
and still keep going.

but instead,
i opened the window,
watched it crawl out into the night.
then i crushed the cigarette,
and thought:
maybe that’s all there is—
just figuring out
who’s worth saving.
and hoping someday,
it’s you.

the hallway smells like spilled beer
and cheap perfume.
someone left their shoes by the door—
a pair of red heels,
like they ran out of courage
halfway to leaving.

I sit on the kitchen floor
with the fridge open,
because it’s the only light
that doesn’t feel like it’s judging me.

half a sandwich,
a bottle of ketchup,
some leftover pasta
that no one will eat.
it’s enough to survive,
but not enough to live.

my head still echoes
with the laughter of strangers,
the kind of laughter
that leaves you lonelier
than silence ever could.
everyone seemed to know the script,
their lines smooth as glass,
their smiles the currency of belonging.

but I just stood there
with a drink in my hand,
watching the ice melt
like it had somewhere better to be.

and now it’s just me
and the hum of the fridge,
and a thought I can’t shake:
that maybe,
all those people with their polished lines
and practiced laughs
feel the same way when it’s over.

maybe we’re all just trying
to get through the night
without anyone noticing
the holes in us,
the ones we spend all day
pretending aren’t there.

but then I look at the shoes by the door,
and I know the truth.

some of us
never even try to leave.

I came into this world
purple,
a bruise before I’d even been touched.
my mother,
terrified,
watched me fight for breath
that didn’t want me.
suffocating—
from the first second I was alive.

couldn’t crawl,
couldn’t walk—
my body slow to learn
how to move forward.
but eventually, I did.

kindergarten was quiet.
me, the kid who didn’t talk.
preschool, I found friends,
found a voice,
found something that felt like living.

then 5th grade came.
cigarettes.
*****.
pills.
older kids teaching me
how to burn my insides
so i wouldn’t feel my skin.

my best friend died.
two weeks later,
I drowned with someone else.
or almost.
he didn’t make it back.
I did.

then the years blurred:
drugs.
assault.
grief.
relapse.
trying to claw my way back to clean.
trying to feel like myself again,
if I even knew who that was.

sometimes,
I think back to that purple baby,
struggling for breath,
and wonder
if maybe I wasn’t supposed
to make it past that first minute.
maybe life has been one long suffocation.

or maybe
I’m still in that hospital room,
fighting for air,
waiting for someone to say:
“you can breathe now.”

the morning crawls in
like an old lover—
too proud to apologize,
too familiar to push away.

I light the cigarette,
the only friend I trust
to show up on time.
ash falls like the years I wasted
chasing women who smelled like
wet matches,
jobs that paid me in ulcers,
and nights that disappeared
into bottles
emptier than I’ll ever admit.

but the world doesn’t ask.
it just watches,
waiting for the moment you fold
like a bar napkin
so it can laugh,
lean in close,
and say,
“what did you expect?”

I’ve loved people like that.
they took pieces of me
like souvenirs from a war
they never fought,
and left me
trying to stand
on a foundation
of broken bottles
and borrowed apologies.

and yet—
on some nights,
when the moon is just a witness
and not a judge,
I still want to live.
not for redemption,
or revenge,
but to see the way
a child laughs
like they’ve never
been lied to.

or to hear the sound
of a stranger crying
in the next apartment over
and know
I’m not the only one
that’s trying
to make sense of all this.

but then it hits me—
the hardest truth of all:
I don’t want the pain to stop.
I just want it
to mean something.

They say you’re the whole **** thing—
the stars, the beggar on the corner,
the lover who left you bleeding
and the cop who fined you for it.
One life at a time,
one failure after another,
you’re everyone and no one,
just waiting for the cracks to show.

Some holy fool whispers,
“You’re the universe learning itself.”
Well, what’s it learning, huh?
How to crawl through dirt?
How to choke on your own dreams
and smile while doing it?
It’s a sick joke, this cosmic egg,
wrapped in gilded lies and half-baked truths,
like Wilde’s wit, polished,
but bitter underneath.

You think you’re only you—
the tired eyes in the mirror,
the aching feet that shuffle home.
But somewhere,
you’re the king in his velvet robes,
drowning in gold,
or the soldier buried in the mud,
forgotten before the war even ends.
All pieces of the same shell,
all scattered across the floor.

They dress it up like wisdom:
You break, you’re born again.
Every crack a lesson,
every fall a step forward.
But sometimes,
it’s just falling.
Just hitting the ground over and over
until you forget what flying felt like.

Still, if you’re everyone,
then maybe the pain belongs to you too.
The laughter,
the warmth of a stranger’s hand,
the quiet moments that don’t ask for meaning.
Maybe that’s what holds it together—
this mess of cracks and light.
Maybe that’s why you keep living,
why you keep breaking.

Because someday,
when the last shell falls,
and the pieces finally fit,
you’ll remember.
You’ll remember you were everything,
and nothing hurt
as much as forgetting.

i woke up this morning
with the same old ache,
the kind you don’t remember
until it’s there,
and it doesn’t care
whether you’ve got a plan
or if you’re just filling time.

the coffee was burnt,
the smoke curled up in the kitchen
like it was trying to make a point—
but who listens to smoke?
who listens to anything
that isn’t loud enough
to scream?

i walked down the street,
watched the same dogs
chase the same cars,
people pretending
they weren’t going to die
just because they smiled.
it’s all a loop,
like a song you hate
but know all the words to.

the bartender asked
if i wanted a drink.
i said no,
but still,
i picked up the glass.
the whiskey didn’t ask questions—
it just settled in,
numbing things
i couldn’t name.

it doesn’t matter,
none of it does—
it’s just you and me,
filling spaces,
waiting for the moment
we realize
there’s no moment to wait for.
it’s all happening right now—
and then it’s gone.

I’m dying of thirst.
Not for water—
but for something real,
something unfiltered,
something that burns when it hits the throat,
like whiskey or the truth.
I’ve drowned in cheap gin
and it didn’t fill me.
I’ve smoked a thousand cigarettes
and still can’t taste life.

They talk about beauty,
like it’s something you can hold
in your hands,
like it’s a thing to be bought
or sold,
wrapped in gold foil and put in a frame,
but all I see is hunger.
There’s no beauty in the world
when you’re scraping the bottom of the bottle
and staring at a ceiling
that refuses to speak to you.

She told me once,
“You’re not what they say you are.”
What the hell does that mean?
What am I supposed to be?
Some saint in a robe,
some poem written on parchment
that never makes it to print?
I’m just a human,
drunk on the emptiness of it all,
suffocating in the silence
of people who think they know me.
They don’t.

They say I’m lost.
Yeah, I’m lost.
Lost in the noise,
in the crowds,
in the streets where people walk past me
like I’m invisible.
And they’re right,
I am invisible.
I’m invisible because I’m trying to be something I’m not.
Because I’ve spent my life
pretending to be the person they want me to be,
but I’m still dying of thirst.

You’re supposed to find yourself,
they say.
Well, I’ve found myself,
but I don’t like what I see.
I’m just a **** wreck,
a torn-up book,
pages stained with the ink of mistakes
that never quite dry.
You don’t get to fix this,
no matter how many times
you try to put the pieces together.
They’ll never fit right.
They were never meant to.

But, hell, it’s fine.
I’m still breathing,
still walking,
still waiting for the next drink,
the next hit,
the next lie to fill me up.
If I don’t keep drinking,
I’ll drown in the thoughts
that keep chasing me down,
the ones that scream for attention,
the ones that tell me
I’m not enough.
And maybe they’re right.
But I’d rather be half-dead
and honest
than full of air and lies.

She called me “brave” once.
What the hell does that even mean?
I’m just a fool who didn’t have the guts
to shut up when it counted.
I’m brave because I didn’t fold
under the weight of the world?
Or because I kept showing up
when I knew I’d get punched in the face
for being different?
Hell, maybe I’m brave
because I didn’t run when I should’ve.
Maybe I’m brave
because I let myself be a fool,
and I wear it like a badge.
But bravery doesn’t mean a **** thing
when you’re choking on your own blood
and no one’s around to help you up.

There’s no poetry in this.
No high-minded words.
Just the crack of my knuckles
and the taste of blood,
the sound of my own thoughts
screaming at me to stop,
to feel something
besides the empty ache.

But the truth is,
I can’t stop.
I can’t stop chasing something
I’ll never catch.
I’ve been dying of thirst for so long
that I don’t know what it’s like to drink anymore.
Maybe I never knew.
Maybe we’re all just waiting
for a glass of water that never comes,
and we convince ourselves
we’re fine
as we slowly fade away.

You want me to be something more?
To be noble?
To be a saint?
Well, I’m not.
I’m just a fool who can’t escape
they’re own **** skin,
trying to find something to numb the hunger.
And if that makes me a coward,
fine.
Call me whatever you want.
But I’m still dying of thirst,
and I’ll drink until it kills me
or until I finally feel alive.

The clock spits hours like broken teeth
and the walls sweat memories I never asked for.
Outside, the sky is drunk—
staggering between night and neon,
while dogs bark at shadows that aren’t even there.
I laugh into my glass of whiskey,
because what else can you do
when life hands you a fistful of
nothing
wrapped in yesterday’s bad news?

The neighbor’s kid screams like a siren
while his mother chain-smokes apologies
to the universe through the cracks in her window.
There’s a man down the street
who argues with God every morning
like they’re old enemies playing cards.
He always loses,
but he plays again anyway.

I’m not crazy—
I’m just tuned into a frequency
no one else wants to hear.
Static and sirens.
The hum of dead stars collapsing quietly.
The sound of a world
that doesn’t even know it’s burning.

I haven’t slept in days.
I keep chasing my thoughts
like a dog chasing its own tail,
round and round,
until they collapse in a pile of exhaustion
and I sit there,
staring at the ashtray,
wondering why my heart
feels like a busted vending machine
spitting out all the wrong things.

They call me a lunatic
because I see the cracks
in their perfect porcelain smiles—
because I know
their gods wear suits
and their saints sell lies.
Because I walk barefoot
on the jagged edge of this world
and I don’t care if I bleed.

So I howl at the moon,
dance with my demons,
and kiss the chaos on its lips.
I scribble madness on the walls,
make love to the mess,
and call it life.
Because maybe lunacy
is the only sane thing left.

the clock ticks louder here.
her pen scratches the paper,
like she’s carving me
into little notes.

she looks at me too long,
her eyes heavy,
like they’re waiting
for me to spill something
I can’t even hold.

I stare at the windows instead,
watch a bird flutter past,
and wish I could go with it.

„How does that make you feel?“
she asks.
I want to say,
„like I’m drowning in a room
with no doors.“
but I just shrug,
pick at my sleeve,
and let the silence win.

she says we’re making progress.
I nod.

but the only thing I leave behind
is the shape of my body
on the chair.

Some people
never leave the office before five.
They sit under fluorescent lights,
sipping coffee,
their dreams filed away in cabinets,
marked „someday.“

Some people
marry their first loves
and never think
about the roads they didn’t take,
the lips they didn’t kiss,
the lives they didn’t live.
They call it safety.

Some people
die in bed,
a whisper for a live,
and the night swallows them whole.
Their gravestones say:
„Beloved.“
Their ghosts scream:
„Bored.“

Life isn’t grand,
it’s a ***** table in a dive bar—
the one where the varnish peels and
your drink leaves rings behind.

People walk past you,
pretending not to see the mess,
the bartender wipes at it anyway,
but it never quite cleans up.

You make a toast to nothing,
to everything,
to the way the sun stains the air at 5 p.m.,
or the waitress who once gave you a smile
you thought was meant for you.

Life isn’t a stage or a script—
it’s that quiet shuffle of feet
as you step outside,
into the cold,
and realize you forgot where you parked.

I asked the moon for mercy.
It laughed -
said mercy was for lovers,
not those who wander alone.