You stroke my hair
Whilst I smooth the flesh
                  That without muscle hangs

Outside the clouds
Turn into a landscape
Obscured by haze
                                     In that moment
I forget the fading time allotted to us
And the reality
Of both our consequences

i bark, and
i lap up vinegared wine from my bowl
laden with sprinkles of fruit flies.

my collar is on
but my leash, real long.
i’m not in earshot, but
i don’t stray too far.

oh, the bliss that must come with
the ignorance to your own actions
the knives you spit with vehemence  
whether involuntary or by choice
a deaf man could’ve felt
the disappointment in your voice

This strange soul calls to mine,
Alluring, fascinating, vexing.
This strange pull, as a rapid wind,
Somehow pushing, still pulling, and taxing.

Strange spirit speaks a foreign tongue.
I speak with no tongue at all.
I would give my soul, my heart, a lung
To stop its decay. Here leaves in fall.

Strange spirit presses soft, then firm.
My spirit falters often.
Strange spirit ever lives and learns,
Cradle, sky, to coffin.

I’m not asking for death
just the quiet
that feels like it.

Not the violence of endings,
but the soft, unbothered blur
of never needing to begin again.

I want to sleep
like a field in winter,
untouched,
frosted over with dreams
that don’t demand answers.
Let me be still
without guilt.
Let me be gone
without grief.

Isn’t it strange,
how the only time we’re truly loved
without needing to perform
is when we’re asleep?
Breathing soft.
Mouth parted like a secret.
Unaware of how deeply we’re being watched
by someone who won’t say it when we wake.

Sleep, to me, is the last mercy
in a world that never stops asking.

Pillow as altar.
Blanket as womb.
This bed has become
the only place that doesn’t ask me
to prove I deserve it.

I’ve made peace with my unread messages.
Let them pile.
Let the world turn.
What does it want from me
that I haven’t already given?

Sometimes, the thought of coffee
isn't enough.
Sometimes, I see the sunrise
and mourn it
like a funeral for the dark
that kept me safe.

I want to sleep through the next decade.
Let my hair grow wild
and my dreams run even wilder.
Let the rain name me
and the wind erase me.

Let people say,
She was tired.
Not as a metaphor,
not as a euphemism,
just the pure truth of it.
Tired in her marrow.
Tired in her memory.
Tired like the sea is tired of being asked to dance
for every storm.

I don’t want applause.
I don’t want rescue.
I just want
the velvet hush
of a world that finally lets me go
without asking why.

No heaven,
no hell.
Just the middle place
where silence blooms,
and the body doesn’t have to mean anything anymore.

And if anyone comes looking
tell them I left
to become a dream.
Not the kind you wake from
the kind you stay inside
forever.