One breath, we were family
the next, two silhouettes unrecognisable.

Are we strangers now?
I’m unsure.
But I do know this:
we stood, souls stripped,
bare in the quiet between us.

I wanted to trust you
to lay my heart in your palms
like kindling,
hoping you’d keep it warm.

Still, I ache.
Not just for your touch,
but for that fierce, wordless belonging.

I touch things I’m not supposed to
and call it prayer.
mouth open,
spine bent,
tongue tasting the fence line.

They say longing is holy
if it stays quiet,
but mine doesn’t—
mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.

They told me I was an open wound,
festering with verse and girlhood.
They weren’t wrong.
But wrong feels a lot like worship
when done slow enough.

They say impure
like it’s a curse,
but all my favorite girls
are made of swampwater and sin.

I’ve never confessed
without turning it into performance.
My mouth was built
for poetry
and plea deals.

I was thirteen
when I learned to ache
without making a sound.
Seventeen
when I turned it into scripture.
Twenty-five
when I realized no one was coming
to carry the body but me.

I keep trying to write
the right-sized truth
but it never fits in a single poem
or apology.

I want back the girl
who ran barefoot into fire
because she believed
it might be heaven.

I want someone to touch me like I’m soft—
even if I’m not.
Even if I bite back.

I want to grab
without apologizing
for how hot my hands are.
I want someone to look at me
like a threat they’d die for.

I want the kind of love
that makes funerals nervous.
I want to be written about
by someone who isn’t me.

And I want to want less.
But I don’t.

You want a softer girl?
Tell that to the altar
I keep burying her under.

i say
"i don't care"
like it's a piece of armour --
almost like if i say it
enough
itll become
true.

but my soul,
it still aches.
in the middle of the
darkness,
in the silence,
it remebers
what my mouth
tries to forget.

i don't care.
but only
out loud,
the rest of me
still cares --
in the darkness,
and in the silence.

I cradle hurricanes in my ribcage
while words swirl around my head.
I try to catch the good ones-
but mostly, I wish I was dead.

I do everything too much-
the joy, the sorrow, the dread.
Yet somehow, I’m never enough-
what a curious truth to be force fed.

If I laugh, it’s always too loud;
my mouth too sharp to make anyone proud.
Crying is a dangerous game,
I could sob away a city, drown in the blame.

My rage leaves no survivors,
as if I line people up on personal pyres.
When I vent, they hear preaching-
a sermon no one wants, a fear of my leeching.

I don’t love, I dissect-
obsessively search for the trap I expect.
I can’t just leave; I burn it all down-
the bubbly, funny girl wears a permanent frown.

I do too much and my inner child feels seen,
She's acting out, we aren't this mean
I just get scared when the vibe is off, and ruining the mood makes the blow more soft.

Despite the chaos I still crave love, an equal partner, wearing fireproof gloves.

i can't seem to wash you off my skin.
yours accidentally touched mine.
as shadows fall onto the eclipse,
my heart turns into a landmine.

exhausted it lays, beating faster,
whenever you're on my mind.
breaths, drawn in sharper,
i can't seem to shut you out.

it's ridiculous, i say to myself,
the power you have on me.
thoughts of you send splinters
throughout every inch of my body.

your presence itself feels like a sin.
you're all i think about.
my wishes, never leaving my lips,
could cause the stars to burn out.

it all weighs heavy on my chest,
like ruins no one came to save.
so i leave it there—forgotten, rotting—
just wishful thinking
digging its own grave.