“Defiance and Dust”
By E.J Crowe

I met you once—
just a passing hello,
like two ghosts brushing shoulders
in a world too loud to notice.

But I noticed.
God, I noticed.

Your name carved itself into
some hollow part of me
that craved
the strange,
the sharp,
the sacred.

You—
eyebrows shaved into defiance,
a lip ring like a dagger’s whisper,
a necklace of spikes—
armor or love letter to pain.

You freeze hair.
You collect teeth.
You wade through dust-covered hallways
where time forgot to breathe.

And you call that beauty.
And now?
So do I.

We don’t speak much.
A like here,
a comment there—
little pulses of proof
that you still walk this digital earth,
that maybe you see me too.

But still—
I love you quietly,
like moths love flame—
a slow-burning ache
I never swat away.

I trace the edges of your silence—
a secret tattoo inked beneath my skin—
something no one else can see,
but burns all the same.

You move like a shadow’s echo,
fading in and out
of my fractured daylight.

And I am tethered—
to the ghost of your defiance,
to the soft collision of your madness and grace.

Sometimes I want to rip
my beating heart
out of my own chest—

hand it to you—
blood warm, pulsing—

watch my ribs collapse to dust—
ashes falling like mournful snow.

You’d hold me then, horrified—
but with that devilish smile
only you could wear.

Sometimes I wonder if you even know
how much you haunt me—

not as a curse,
but as a fragile, flickering light
I dare not reach for.

Your playlist bleeds.
Your smile doesn’t beg
to be understood.

Your hobbies flirt with madness—
and yet somehow—
you are the sanest piece of art
I’ve ever seen.

A walking gallery of grief and grace—
macabre in the most delicate ways.

You don’t need saving.
You never did.

But if you ever look my way—
really look—

just know—

I’m still here.

In awe.
In shadow.
In love
from afar.