I turn in my own hands
a geometry of doubt.
A small, obedient universe
clicking on its axis,
pretending permutation is progress.
I spiral, yes circles falling
but not like smoke.
Smoke would escape in reverse
I spiral like a Rubik's Cube
twisted by invisible fingers,
colours misaligned,
faces refusing covenant.
Red does not love red.
Blue denies blue.
Green forgets the envy it once claimed.
Every side insists it was whole once
but memory is a liar built from plastic.
Silence does not fall here.
It locks.
A click.
A slow calcification between rotations.
The throat of the mechanism jams,
and no configuration spells meaning.
Reality and dream
are merely different algorithms
failing to solve me.
They bleed across edges
corner into centre,
centre into edge
no border, no mercy,
just one stubborn misalignment
that refuses to resolve.
The mirror is only another face
white, perhaps
meant to signify purity.
But white is just absence pretending to be order.
I hold it up to the light
and see only arrangement,
never inhabitant.
I have a voice.
It grinds between rotations.
A dry hinge.
Words attempt lift-off
but collapse into unsolvable states
wingless permutations
never reaching symmetry.
Inside, something ticks wrong.
A clock disguised as colour.
Fractured gears disguised as childhood.
I was a boy
when brass met bone
and blood baptized the table
a red square clicking into permanence.
I was a boy
when hatred floated like harmless dust,
fine as powdered plastic,
entering lungs
and staying there
like a hidden centrepiece
that can never be moved.
They ask if I am broken.
But cubes do not break.
They scramble.
Cracks are polite words for entropy.
For the slow confession
that order was temporary theatre.
The walls kept echoes.
I kept images on repeat
archived in coloured stickers
that peel but never disappear.
Years rotate.
Gone, gone, gone
yet the mechanism remembers every turn.
Time does not heal.
It merely adds layers of rotation
until the original face
is unrecognizable.
They call me problematic.
As if trauma were optional configuration.
As if survival were not
the act of rearranging oneself
into something less target-shaped.
You think time alters architecture.
It does not.
It reorders the visible sides
while the core remains fixed
a silent *****
holding all contradictions together.
Nothing changes
when you change who you are
to survive it.
The spiral continues
not downward,
but inward
the implosion of self.
Every turn moves closer
to the centre no one sees.
The axis.
The wound.
And somewhere beneath the fracture,
beneath the plastic,
beneath the mathematics of despair,
something still breathes
a quiet defiance in the core.
I do not call it hope.
Perhaps it is only inertia.
Perhaps it is the final cruelty
that even when misaligned beyond recognition,
I continue to turn.
Feb 17
Feb 17, 2026 at 1:15 PM UTC
I turn in my own hands
a geometry of doubt.
A small, obedient universe
clicking on its axis,
pretending permutation is progress.
I spiral, yes circles falling
but not like smoke.
Smoke would escape in reverse
I spiral like a Rubik's Cube
twisted by invisible fingers,
colours misaligned,
faces refusing covenant.
Red does not love red.
Blue denies blue.
Green forgets the envy it once claimed.
Every side insists it was whole once
but memory is a liar built from plastic.
Silence does not fall here.
It locks.
A click.
A slow calcification between rotations.
The throat of the mechanism jams,
and no configuration spells meaning.
Reality and dream
are merely different algorithms
failing to solve me.
They bleed across edges
corner into centre,
centre into edge
no border, no mercy,
just one stubborn misalignment
that refuses to resolve.
The mirror is only another face
white, perhaps
meant to signify purity.
But white is just absence pretending to be order.
I hold it up to the light
and see only arrangement,
never inhabitant.
I have a voice.
It grinds between rotations.
A dry hinge.
Words attempt lift-off
but collapse into unsolvable states
wingless permutations
never reaching symmetry.
Inside, something ticks wrong.
A clock disguised as colour.
Fractured gears disguised as childhood.
I was a boy
when brass met bone
and blood baptized the table
a red square clicking into permanence.
I was a boy
when hatred floated like harmless dust,
fine as powdered plastic,
entering lungs
and staying there
like a hidden centrepiece
that can never be moved.
They ask if I am broken.
But cubes do not break.
They scramble.
Cracks are polite words for entropy.
For the slow confession
that order was temporary theatre.
The walls kept echoes.
I kept images on repeat
archived in coloured stickers
that peel but never disappear.
Years rotate.
Gone, gone, gone
yet the mechanism remembers every turn.
Time does not heal.
It merely adds layers of rotation
until the original face
is unrecognizable.
They call me problematic.
As if trauma were optional configuration.
As if survival were not
the act of rearranging oneself
into something less target-shaped.
You think time alters architecture.
It does not.
It reorders the visible sides
while the core remains fixed
a silent *****
holding all contradictions together.
Nothing changes
when you change who you are
to survive it.
The spiral continues
not downward,
but inward
the implosion of self.
Every turn moves closer
to the centre no one sees.
The axis.
The wound.
And somewhere beneath the fracture,
beneath the plastic,
beneath the mathematics of despair,
something still breathes
a quiet defiance in the core.
I do not call it hope.
Perhaps it is only inertia.
Perhaps it is the final cruelty
that even when misaligned beyond recognition,
I continue to turn.
