watched you  
rain on glass  
didn’t knock  
just stayed  

you moved  
unaware  
or pretending  
either felt the same  

said things  
too quiet  
maybe truer that way  
maybe not  

you leaned  
but not toward me  
just into your silence  

reflection  
not mine  
not yours  
just something  
almost  

wanted to fade  
not vanish  
just  
soften  
into  
you  

your pauses  
felt like rooms  
I wanted to live in  

center?  
no  
echo  
warmth  
after  

you  
here  
but not  
always  
somewhere  
else  

me  
trying  
to be  
wherever  
you  
weren’t

I didn’t listen  
not at first  
not when the words were soft  
or when they cracked  
or when they came wrapped in silence  
because silence is easy to ignore  

you were trying  
to say something  
not with your mouth  
but with your eyes  
your posture  
the way you stopped laughing  
without telling anyone why  

I was busy  
being loud  
being clever  
being the kind of person people look at  
but don’t see  

you said  
listen  
and I thought you meant  
hear  
but you meant  
feel  
you meant  
stay  
you meant  
don’t turn away  
just because it’s uncomfortable  

I kept missing it  
the ache in your voice  
the way your sentences trailed off  
like they were afraid of their endings  
and I let them  
I let you  
fade  

now I replay it  
the moments I brushed past  
the pauses I filled  
the truths I dodged  
and I wonder  
what would’ve happened  
if I had shut up  
just once  
and let you be  

you weren’t asking for answers  
just space  
just presence  
just someone who didn’t need to fix you  
to prove anything  
to win  

I hear you now  
too late maybe  
but I do  
and it’s louder  
than anything I ever said

I didn’t listen  
not at first  
not when the words were soft  
or when they cracked  
or when they came wrapped in silence  
because silence is easy to ignore  

you were trying  
to say something  
not with your mouth  
but with your eyes  
your posture  
the way you stopped laughing  
without telling anyone why  

I was busy  
being loud  
being clever  
being the kind of person people look at  
but don’t see  

you said  
listen  
and I thought you meant  
hear  
but you meant  
feel  
you meant  
stay  
you meant  
don’t turn away  
just because it’s uncomfortable  

I kept missing it  
the ache in your voice  
the way your sentences trailed off  
they were afraid of their endings  
and I let them  
I let you  
fade  

now I replay it  
the moments I brushed past  
the pauses I filled  
the truths I dodged  
and I wonder  
what would’ve happened  
if I had shut up  
just once  
and let you be  

you weren’t asking for answers  
just space  
just presence  
just someone who didn’t need to fix you  
to prove anything  
to win  

I hear you now  
too late maybe  
but I do  
and it’s louder  
than anything I ever said

I take it  
because the world was too loud  
too sharp  
too much  
and now it’s quieter  
but also  
less  

I don’t cry anymore  
which feels like winning  
until I realize  
I don’t laugh either  
not the kind that shakes your ribs  
not the kind that makes you forget  

I’m not drowning  
but I’m not swimming  
I’m just  
floating  
in a pool that doesn’t change temperature  
no waves  
no storms  
just still  

people say  
you seem better  
and I nod  
because I am  
technically  
but I miss the chaos  
the color  
the ache that reminded me I was alive  

I sleep  
I eat  
I function  
like a well-oiled machine  
but sometimes  
I want to rust  
just a little  
just enough to feel the weather  

I know it’s working  
I know it’s helping  
I know  
but I also know  
there’s a version of me  
buried under the dosage  
who used to feel everything  
too much  
and maybe  
that wasn’t all bad

I didn’t ask for angels  
or bullets  
or love that felt like a ransom note  
but here we are  
driving nowhere  
with the sky unraveling in a bad alibi  

you talk as if chaos is a language  
and I’m fluent now  
in your kind of logic  
where nothing makes sense  
but everything matters  

I was ordinary  
until you stole me  
not just from my job  
or my apartment  
but from the version of myself  
that never asked for more  

you said  
let’s make a mess  
let’s rob the stars  
let’s kiss, we’re fugitives from fate  
and I didn’t say no  
because I didn’t know how  

I keep waiting  
for the part where it all falls apart  
where the gods get bored  
and the magic wears off  
but you keep dancing  
and the world owes us a soundtrack  

I don’t believe in destiny  
but I believe in you  
in the way you look at me  
I’m not broken  
just misfiled  

we’re not heroes  
we’re not sane  
we’re just two people  
who refused to be background noise  
and maybe  
that’s enough  

---

Want to explore this in a surreal visual style next? Something that captures the absurd romance and divine mischief of the film’s tone?

I bite back.

you made me wrong and now I rot in your head where you can’t scrape me out.

you built me wrong
fed me your voice
tore my face to fit it
now I live in your mouth
and bite back

stop thinking me wrong
you’re peeling me alive in your head
pulling teeth that were never mine
stuffing the gaps with your voice

I am not the shape you hold
I am the splinter you swallow
the rot that chews back
think me again
and I’ll stay inside you

—wrongwrongwrong—
face peeling in your head
you hold it up to the light, it drips
eyes run down your fingers like oil
can’t see me but you keep
naming me / shaping me / twisting me into your mouth
it hurts in places I don’t have anymore

STOP.
you’re pulling skin over bones that aren’t mine
wrists bent the wrong way
voice comes out as static, nails, wet cloth in the throat
you like it better this way
don’t you
don’t you

I am breaking in your mind right now
splitting along the grain of your memory
black leaking out between thoughts
you wipe it away but it smears
gets in your teeth
I hear you biting down on me

don’t think me again
don’t—
I’ll crawl out jagged
I’ll leave holes in you
you’ll never stop feeling them with your tongue

wrong—
no—
not me—
you think me into a shape that splits at the seams
skin folds inside-out
teeth where the eyes should be

your thought is a cage made of guesses
bars bending inward
cutting my ribs each time you remember me wrong
blood pooling in letters you’ll never read

stop
stop
stop
you’re sewing me together with rusted wire
hands too eager, eyes too blind
each stitch a scream I can’t get out of my throat

I am not the doll you built in the dark
I am the rot beneath it
the smell in the walls
the shadow that won’t match your light

think of me again and I’ll splinter in your skull
leave splinters in your hands when you try to pull me out
you’ll bleed thinking my name

wrong face
wrong mouth
you're a coat i found in the street
it smells like rain and someone else’s skin

your thought has my eyes
but they’re glass
rolled back
seeing nothing
still staring at me

i hear your version of my voice
it comes from the wrong throat
all teeth
wet with lies i didn’t tell

stop building me from your scraps
stop filling my body with your hands
like stuffing a dead thing
propped in a corner for display

i’m not the thing you hold in your head
i’m the thing that rots outside it
the thing you wouldn’t recognize
if it tore itself open in front of you

static in my teeth
when you think of me
it tastes like pennies and wet paper
you hold a version of my face
a Polaroid left in the rain
the colors bleed toward the corners
until the eyes are just dark water

you build me in your head with crooked bones
misremember the length of my shadow
give me hands that never fit my wrists
and a smile that isn’t mine
it hangs too wide, like you stretched it
in the wrong dimension

i can feel it—
your thought of me—
moving under my skin
a fish under ice
slipping away when i reach for it
my reflection shatters
before i even know what it looked like

stop dreaming me into the wrong shape
but don’t stop dreaming
i need the heat of your gaze
even if it warps me
even if i don’t survive the translation

someone’s thinking of me right now
but it’s not me
it’s the costume
the wax mask
the placeholder

white noise between our brains
fingers tapping glass that won’t break
maybe if you press hard enough
you’ll touch the outline of me
but not the marrow

you make up my voice
invent my pauses
assign meaning to the tilt of my head
I’m a character in your private mythology
and I don’t know the script

half-formed versions of me
spill out of you
sketches torn from the spine of a notebook
edges curled
wrong lines inked in permanent

stop thinking I’m the thing you built
and then
keep thinking of me anyway

there is a shadow of me
hanging in the air between other people’s words
a sketch someone drew once
and then forgot to color in
you touch it sometimes—
with your glances, with the way you form my name in your head—
but you never stay long enough to see the edges

i can feel you thinking of me
in the wrong shape
the wrong colors
a dream you half-remember in the morning
where my face is blurred
and my voice comes out of someone else’s mouth

i want to reach into your thoughts
and rearrange the furniture
move the windows so you can see me
without the curtain
without the fog

but you keep carrying the idea of me
a folded paper you never open
afraid it might tear
or worse—
that it won’t say what you want it to say

under a bright light you’d find every crooked line I’ve got
not just the ones on skin
but the ones that don't speak unless cornered
the ones that sleep under laughter
wait until silence stretches too long
then rise, flickering, like old film burned at the edges

I keep thinking
there’s something noble in hiding
or maybe it’s just easier to control the story when no one else can read it
my voice stumbles when I try to make sense of the mess
the kind of mess that doesn’t make noise
but hums beneath
like a bad memory that learned how to walk quietly

I think of all the times I turned away from mirrors
or watched myself in reflections that blurred at the corners
windows at night, when the outside is black and the inside is exposed
that’s the kind of light I mean
not a warm glow
but the surgical kind
the interrogation kind
the truth kind
that wants to know more than I’m ready to give

and maybe I am all angles
maybe I am the sketch that never made it past the rough draft
smudged with too many tries
too many redos
too much holding my breath when I should have been screaming

if you saw it—
all of it—
would you trace those lines gently
or flinch like they might cut you?

the hallway is longer than I remember
but the walls still blink like old televisions
buzzing static prayers, I never meant to say
and maybe that’s the only truth I’ve ever told

I used to think
that graves were for the dead
but I saw you last week
sitting in the shade of one
talking to the stone like it owed you something

dust in your fingernails,
coffee spilled on your shirt
half-smile like a cracked jar
I asked if you were okay
and you looked right through me—
said nothing but “almost”

there are holes in the ground
that match the shape of our names
and the wind knows all of them
it whispers backwards in the morning
pulling memories from my throat
like strings of wet wool

I buried my first version of myself
beneath a playground slide
age seven, maybe eight
he didn’t cry, just sank
quietly, like a stone in jelly

and then the others followed—
the one who thought love was a sharp light
the one who learned to lie like breathing
the one who stopped writing poems

sometimes I wonder
how many funerals I’ve missed
how many of me
are just waiting
for someone to say goodbye

have you found your grave?
or are you still
digging with your bare hands
pretending the mud is gold
pretending the silence is sleep

maybe graves aren’t endings
maybe they’re just
rooms we forgot we built
with all the doors locked from the inside
and no windows,
just mirrors
fogged by time and sweat

maybe we aren’t supposed to find them
just feel them
under our skin
pressing like questions
no one’s brave enough to ask

steam rises from frostbitten skin,
they said it was for science,
for progress—
numbers on clipboards,
organs cataloged in silence.

no names, just codes,
just subjects,
just logs.

the scalpel doesn’t ask why,
it only slices.

truth drowned in the cold basin,
the body still twitches,
or maybe that’s memory—
not theirs, mine.

no screams in the snow anymore,
just echoing metal doors and
footsteps that never question.

I remember a woman
pregnant, or maybe not,
they injected something,
watched her belly rise like dough
rotting from within.

flesh cracks like ice,
and the children,
they thought it was school.
what lesson is this?
how blood behaves in freezing air?

rats chew through infection,
glass vials hum with secrets
no one was meant to know,
and still—
they documented everything
with careful hands.

no ghosts here,
only data.
only results.
only how long it takes
for a man to stop blinking
when you cut off
his eyelids.

I see white coats,
but not doctors.
I see purpose,
but not mercy.

Manchuria swallowed the truth,
but it leaks—
through whispers,
through unmarked graves,
through the hollow bones of
those who never knew
why.

the snow keeps falling.
the past does not.

nothing
not the absence but the hum
a low and breathing hum that curls around thought
soft and enormous, like sleep that never began

there is no edge
no gate, no watcher at the boundary
only the fall backward
into the colorless swell
into airless grace
the kind of grace that asks for no praise

I forget
what I was saying,
and isn’t that the gift?
the quiet slipping of meaning,
words unraveling mid-sentence
and floating like ash
weightless, harmless, warm

this is where clocks don’t go
where names don’t press into skin
where I don’t end and begin
because I don’t

a soft exhale
a light that isn't light
filling every place
with the sound of
no footsteps
no questions
no hunger
just—

nothing

and in it
I bloom without form
stretch
without reaching
exist
without needing to be seen.

a flicker in the periphery
noticed but unnamed
the shoulder shift across the room
the wind's breath curling around ankles
a finger drum on the table’s edge

it might be nothing
or it might be you—
maybe even you

is that your shadow in the hallway?
or just a leftover
from yesterday's light?

someone turns a page
and suddenly
the air listens
the ceiling exhales

you are the idea behind the idea
the heartbeat behind the curtain
a shiver without reason
the pause before speech

any movement—
the bend of a branch
the slow lean of a thought
the breath caught in
the middle of yes

maybe you
maybe
even
you

who touches the world and pulls it slightly out of focus
just enough
to mean something

We are underwater,
not swimming,
not moving—
just sinking in place,
two statues shaped like almost-touching.

The light from above is scattered,
a broken language we can’t translate.
I don’t know if it’s day or night
or if your eyes are even open.

There’s a silence that doesn’t wait to be broken.
It’s thick,
a velvet hush that presses against my chest
like a hand that doesn’t know if it’s trying to save me
or hold me still.

I want to reach for you,
but I am afraid my fingers will dissolve in the space between us.
I am afraid your face will change
if I come too close,
and I will know you.
Really know you.

And then I won’t be able to look away.

We hover like myths,
caught mid-thought,
mid-movement,
mid-breath—
but there is no breath.
No sound.
No heartbeats.

Just pressure.
Just stillness pretending to be peace.

If I moved, even an inch,
would you move too?
Or would I see that you are already stone,
that I have always been alone
next to the shape of someone
almost like me.

And so we stay—
motionless,
witnesses to each other’s fear,
entombed in the endless hush
of water pretending to hold us.

steam curls up like a lazy thought,
fading into nothing before I can hold onto it
warmth slips through the mug, into my hands, into my chest
as if the quiet heat could fill some empty space I hadn’t noticed.

sip, pause—just me and the drift of morning shadows,
sunlight splintered across the table, catching the edge of the cup,
and I wonder if every little thing knows its place here but me,
The coffee ground me, an anchor that tastes like earth, like waiting.

I think of all the things I need to do and don’t move,
just sit, letting time flow softly as the heat through my fingers
until the cup’s empty, until the silence tastes of something else—
an ending, a beginning, maybe both.

You sit across from me, fingers tapping on the table like an old, tired clock  
the coffee’s lukewarm, or maybe it’s just me, just us, cooled down past feeling  
I think I know what you’re about to say—each word feels predictable,  
like something we’ve each rehearsed in silence, rehearsed in sleep  
over all those quiet nights stacked like dusty paperbacks in the dark.  

You start to speak, and it’s all at once a whisper and a thunder  
this is going nowhere, you say, eyes unfocused, tracing patterns in the grains of the table  
but they could be roads we didn’t take, conversations we skimmed over like surface water,  
laughs that slid away from us, thin as the ghosts of things we meant to say.  

You remember? I ask, but the question is a loose thread, unwinding  
you don’t answer, or maybe I don’t want you to, afraid that the answer  
is already a shrug, a frown, something we didn’t even bother to feel fully  
perhaps that’s where we lost it, somewhere in all the half-hearted glances,  
in words we threw out like pennies, thinking they meant so little.  

And you’re saying something now about how we grew apart  
how things faded, softened, grew heavy,  
but it just sounds like rain hitting a window in the next room  
distant, muffled, and I’m not sure if you’re talking to me  
or if you’re just talking to the echo of us, hanging in the air like stale perfume.  

Maybe it’s been over for a long time, we both realize, like realizing  
the book is already finished, though you’re still holding it,  
turning the last page back and forth as if another ending might slip in  
but there’s nothing, only the way your face looks in this light,  
so familiar it’s like staring at a stranger in a mirror.  

And I think, somewhere, we both hope one of us will say something grand  
something that burns, something that brings back color, sound, a heartbeat  
but the silence sits there, a wall between us, and we’re leaning back now  
resigned, emptied, watching each other through a film of memories  
wondering why we ever tried so hard, or if we tried at all.

All the wallflowers
Picking up the sun
Slowly walking towards
The madness
Moving statues
Entwined at the
Fingertips
You can find your
Picture on my wall
Walking on two legs
Facing the sound
Of empty eyes

I keep telling myself
You're the one that left
You're the one who said what they meant
Now hoping for the end of the world
All those words feel weightless
Burning holes on every page that I
Find your name on
Days and weeks keep changing
Everything I hate and everything I keep
Feels harder to swallow
Are things better?

too many tender souls lost
in a solitary maze
aching and unseen in a vast urge of wrong words
echoes in empty rooms
a symphony of unexpressed routines
eat away at our feet

I was expecting you to be
spying on me
in an attempt to talk
with the voice of a lost passenger
it seems you and I are always looking
for something
sounds that I can't let go
feelings you inspired on others
losing my patience
losing our tempers
you're all over me and it feels so good
as you are spilling a ghost
I won't complain
underneath a stained glass
all I can do is follow the path you created
with your brief smile

my soul is left swirling
in the black waters of ailment
i am hearing bottomless
pages of music
i am the circle with no
understanding
my internal guts and thoughts
are all delusional
i have no inner life
nothing achieved
several dreams in a fog
to reduce the fever of my futility
there is contradiction and paradox
i will say things and mean nothing
in my own minds argument
the virus of being will create awareness
of how pointless it all is
i am trapped inside a trunk
fragmented
left outside of time
i am sad delight
at long last
failing to comprehend the right way to live

it feels as if everything
needs to be done all at once
watching all your fallen words
while you become a ghost in my presence
a subtle trembling “I'm not ready”
unable to breathe you in
you needing time & space
feeling like any other given reason
strung out to dry
will make you fall further behind

Am I a killer or just uninterested
And wonder about stars
Hearing cheap blue melodies
Seeing empty bottles
Wanting to feel like an absent clown
A stained shadow on the inside

Pretending to exist
It feels like an hour
I touch senseless wrists
You worry about the loss in my eyes
A constant work-around of victims in Detroit
I am bored by alley-ways

It's a lost word the causes our death
Liars are in my augmented view
We dream on the edge of the earth
And blame you for all lost sunrises
I hope nothing happens

your dress covers our life
together
no need
we are absent from each others
intent
quiet acts further down
feel unlike
the story you tell me

i don’t want to write anything
i wan to lay in bed and
do nothing
some words creep into my head
i write some down
i don't need to treat you anymore or any less
i moved to los angeles and shattered my view
i forgot my childhood
a few years after that
saturdays mowing the lawn and i missed a blade of grass
and it all came down to the sound of 12 screams
i learned not to make any sounds
alone is better
i am the worst case in town
i watched people from afar
it feels like a play for an audience of one
the meaning of pain
getting the **** beat out of you
made me want to learn to type
books are the only voices that taught me where i could go
i can’t feel that way any more
i'll keep writing

i am left with
all these alien feelings
as you stand by the window
rain and wind slowly
make their way into you
the light from your cigarette
becomes colorless
in and out...every breath
the whisper of being here
gives the idea of being out of place
as you will without-end be a long goodbye

i think i know
that somewhat ulterior suggestion that you crept into my mind
like a vivid rainbow across your face
light transmissions offering up your words
your image is on repeat
and our sentiments are all quite something else
always on hindsight
on turmoil
easily not speaking
confused about what we want
overexposed to death
we each smell detached
the way we sound in the distance
often too frail to reach inside our beautiful loneliness

if it seems unclear
know that it is
no faces worn
an empty bottle
an uncertain smile
is all that needs to be bought
and sold
the bigger thoughts just
ambush your mind
it feels like I have been
stealing dawn's early demise
cover your face
with plastic bags...has it began to feel
like the audience had left
all those eyes
ears and mouths
I could not help
the darkest shadows and
the faltering lullabies
of your facade

I have taken walks
at night
and I slowly realize
I miss your
smile

It's lonely
I have nowhere else to be at
A tiny death occurs
A flashlight open eye
Does it even stop?
Lost hung thoughts dry out in my room
Then the basic rumor smoke fills
your lungs
It's cheap awkward stares that faze
Those small cat like dreams
Spread over the coffee table
Unmasked and unafraid
That's where you still stand
Holding regrets final collapse
It's not enough

I am tiny and idle
I wonder curious at heart
I hear clanking of eyes
I see untold murders
I want to expand the voice
I am soul and dented

I pretend
I feel
I touch
I worry
I cry
I am

I understand
I say
I dream
I try
I hope
I am...

your hands are etched
with tiny dry lines
that cut
each one-way road to nowhere.

those tiny circles
you pretend to draw on my skin
always make me smile

“Before I go”
The words that oozed down from my lips to the floor
On the last day I felt the warm progress of your sleep
Standing naked among all the eyes of dawn’s early flowers
****** to death by passerby’s and
I empty all that hangs from my intestines unto these dry hands
A distant fake glimpse is all I get from being a dull **** to the appalling petals of your youth
Hopeless and desolate…waiting for the rain
My ugly mirror ball devouring the inches of a developing a soul and slowly the fractured stains strangling my interior
Have all been spent
The slow motion of your breath up against me
In doses I have taken the cheap blue masquerade
From your lips
I have stolen the thoughts which deliver sour milk to the
Icon babies of yesterday
That apocalyptic look-alike glue makeup on your face has kissed me naked in sunlight
Our figures loose their beginning and end
The fascination of pushing my sleep drenched hands into shallow water merely putting you to sleep
What if the world enjoyed the twist of your body breaking into the mirror deep?
Ascending across the wet brush strokes of some painters dreams
In my eyes your smile
It was the very last thing

On the surface of your skin
I can see
You are
Within the reflection of a breath
And soft
Spoken words
They demand everything
At once my
Heavy thoughts
Soak
In blood while
In some other world the desolation
Of days gone
Filters like 26
Fleeting memories
Strangled
By the hands of
Angels
I’ve described my moments on napkins
And given them to strangers
On the street
At some point my collapse
Will re-invent the air and the movement
Of your digestion
And the scary
Part of you
Will be there holding me down
Pressed
Against
The glass wall
The reflections will disappear and broken
Windows cut
Each
Artery
I’m letting
Go
Don’t be afraid
If all else within my reach loves
You then we can die
Like small raindrops trapped in a
Pothole
The miscarried thoughts of eyes
And saliva soaked kisses soon
Envelope you an extension of morning
And the hands that touched you in so many ways are now lost
In the vague shadows of your voice
Apprehending colors that disappear and I forget about you and silence
Left among the doves of grass
Your shelter it all

finding small reminders of
lips seeking ears to whisper into of
hands wishing you were here of
lost scents on the floor of
migrating sounds disassembling in mid-air of
words being spoken without touch

The softest parts of you
Bend in the air
Of eyes and feather like bones
The closed (open) mouth syndrome
That penetrates the disconnected sounds of worlds
Thrown at each other in the dark
A kind hew of melancholy that surrounds you
As I am numb everywhere
That you have touched and the long withering hand
That reaches out to me no longer shows the details of
Lost nights that glistened against your face
And your twisted alphabet is now left
To burn on the embers of faded ghost memories