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Ellie Sep 21
"You never acknowledged your disrespect that triggered me."
The pain of being invalidated
vik Aug 15
if the theatre breathes like a rancid lung
   it must exhale into the rafters;
ledger-scent and sour of iron...y,
  and hours congealed into one bleak bruise.

then it must be that only (i) inherit a vessel
as one inherits a house wrecked by fire:
   walls still too warm with other lives,
wallpaper peeled into letters that spell me.
   never (my) name.

heart-beat / heart • skip
(these syllables only ever tally debts.)

    (my) palms are tax-collectors with gloves far too soft to grasp mercy.
    (my) ribs are two little vaults where accusations slumber.
    and there are ceaseless receipts folded inside the sole of (my) shoe.

evenings most beautiful
  with rain pouring down their face,
have stopped pooling and now,

   they sediment, layer upon layer...
in the strata of one’s rues,
  as ossified bulwarks for crimes (i) never learned.

a braided tongue of smoke
   knots through (my) chest,
insisting on words (i) never even conceived,
       sighing a confession to a jury of
absent eyes.

  they led me to the scaffold
palisaded oak, blade polished to a sunless gleam,
and the (crowd), silent as those ledge
pages,
      watched
as i was sentenced for the mere act of knowing.

and even as the head fell,
       i felt the phonetics of my existence
spill like tarnished coins across the wet cobblestones,
  and the (spectators), formless and meticulous,
  gathered them as though i were (theirs).
returns
Some people don’t feel the heat.
It is because of those who don’t feel the heat,
that the empty paddy fields turn green,
the roads and bylanes stay clean.
the vehicles of noisy people move without obstruction.
Because of those who don’t feel the heat,
non-motorized rickshaws still move,
hand-pulled carts still survive.
Because of them,
gift packets, perfumes, birthday cakes
reach homes on time.
Some people don’t feel the heat,
and perhaps because of them
– even though fire and smoke pour daily from your mouths –
the earth has not turned to ash,
the city has not yet perished.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Emric Arthur Jul 24
I cannot be your Loki,
My shoulders are short,
Unable to shelve your blame,
A scapegoat I won’t be.

I have both guilt and shame,
My wolf and my serpent,
They circle my soul,
And with your scorn, swallow me whole.

Look into your mirror of trials.
Look at yourself and say three times -
Am I to blame for this injustice?
Accountability is why Loki smiles.
Can’t be everyone’s hero—
but it’s so easy to be framed as the villain in someone’s story,
caught in the blur between goodwill and what they believe is ill will,
the wheel spinning from “helpful” to “harmful” without warning.
The sickened influencer—tired of carrying hearts like glass—
now catching cold thoughts, like a mind with influenza,
and I’m wondering: do I get any better at doing the most,
or do I just give less of a **** as the walls I build
crumble beneath the weight of everything I try to hold back?
Does any of it matter, really—at all?

Not everyone will love you like a lover in the honeymoon season—
the moon only glows for a night, and even the sweetest honey dries
when left open too long. And what you think might bring us closer
can become the very thing we learn to hate together.
But maybe in the court of opinion, I’ve become too quick
to cast judgment—forgetting that my sense-of-self
sometimes acts selfish too.

But I’m not standing tall above anyone—I’ve got my own
shortcomings, and none of them come in small doses.
I sin too. Like you, I can act so human, too human, too often.
Mélissa Jun 17
Grown ups are liars and kids know

We told them we had to protect them from the world

But the world is us

And it is no place for our kids
I went looking for someone to blame for all the cracks
in my name, for the mess I made — but that mirror
didn’t tell a lie. The culprit wore my face.
I don’t want your love. I don’t want your shame.
Still, somehow, you found me — tongue bitter with
the taste of your mistakes; pressed against my teeth
like communion for the broken.

Tears rose — blooming smoke, clouds of falling flowers.
A storm of soft destruction, raining petals made of regret —
but it never rained just mine. It rained yours too.

Yet you learn to grow from the things that once cut
you down. Even the sharpest wounds can become
something softer when you let them go.
Edges trimmed; old roots shed — and still, I rise.
So now, when you see me, don’t mistake me for my
damage. I am not the bruise. I am not the blade.
I am far better than the sum of my mistakes.
Spicy Digits Jun 10
You ripped us to shreds
For your tourniquet
Silenced us with your book,
Lauding it
Used your belt to whip us
Into your childhood
We fill ourselves with loathing
To hide it.

Yet, you are absolved from blame
As your fathers did the same
And now as we are older
Per tradition, carry the shame.
To live is to suffer.
To love is to suffer.
To create is to suffer.

Existence itself is stitched with sorrow,
but in its aching seams,
blooms something beautiful.

So we must choose —
choose carefully
who, or what, we are willing to suffer for.

And I chose you.

I chose to cradle the weight of your name
in the hollow of my chest,
to love you through the good, the bad,
the moments that left us broken and bleeding,
the silences heavy as tombstones.

I sit now, in the wreckage of what was,
thinking of forever —
the whole nine yards,
a life I painted in the colors of you.

But you're not here anymore.
You exist only in fleeting fragments,
ghost-thoughts
of laughter in a room now silent,
of touches I’ll never feel again.

And I am the reason.
I carry that like a stone in my gut,
a burden I won't set down.

Yet, I choose to be better,
to climb out of myself,
to carve light from the grief.

Because as long as my lungs rise and fall,
as long as my heart dares to beat,
I’ll remember —
your arms were the only home
I ever truly knew.

And maybe one day,
this suffering will shape me
into someone worthy
of loving like that again.
.......life
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