I open my ribs.  
peeling back the sinews and  
capillaries with precision.  
The crack of spreading bones,  
my chambered apparatus laid  
delicately on the table.  
  
My implement extracts its pound
onto the slab with intention,  
pulled and pressed till it's paper  
thin and bled out. Soulspeak scrawled  
in the crackling veins of my parchment.  
  
I put my machinations on display  
for onlookers, merchants  
and collectors  
but none seem to gather any interest.  
Skinpull another page  
but nothing sells  
or charms or foments.  

I pack my wares and  
toss them onto the pile of  
my dried out corpse scattered  
on the floor.  
Failure.  
Another procedure.  
Relent, repeat, cut deeper.  
And hope to find a reader.

I was meant to be a masterpiece
but I remain a sketch
left leaning against the wall,
my outlines fading in the silence.

The brush never touched me.
No colors ever dared to fill me in.
I am paused mid-creation,
a ghost of what I could’ve been.

Turned away from the light,
as if my presence is too loud,
too much,
too unfinished to be seen.

Not art.
Not ruin.
Just something left behind
too heavy to display,
too delicate to destroy,
too much of a burden to face.

Never love an artist,
They don't have beauty left to give you.

You love me,
I try to give you all my beauty,
Though it curdles, turning into a night we regret.

Leaving you upset.

I chiseled away at my marble,
chipping off the faults they proclaimed,
carving the weird, the unworthy,
leaving veins of 'truth'
Fingerprints linger in the dust on the floor,
where the best remnants lay forgotten,
the shoes that were too goody,
the hips that were too round,
the laugh that was too loud,
the silly khaki-less fantasies tie-dyed
and woven with moonbeams.
I stood in galleries,
tying my approval to wanted 'yays'
but no one recognized the girl
who was still holding the hammer.
I sat beside her,
my hand upon the chasm,
where a heart should've burgeoned,
and felt only stone,
pining for her name within the dolomite.
The crows brought me a mirror,
reflecting the squareness I had tried to shape
from my hexagonal being,
edges missing, sanded down
to match the softness of the world.
'rebuild' they cawed
recementing, unhallowing,
letting the fractures bloom moss,
and the rough edges catch the light,
we are not meant to echo.
Let the gallery grow wild,
breaking through the sedimentary,
sparkling eternal agate
from the stardust of which we are made.

Flowing across the page.
Everything comes to me at once.
The colors dance upon the paper.
Like a performance on a stage.

The only one in the audience is me.
Observant and thinking about the next step.
I am voiceless.
So I let the dancers speak for me instead.

As a voice for the voiceless.
They understand my heart.

Colors flowing across the page.

The colors dance upon the paper.

The only one in the audience is me.

Watching as it becomes alive.

Letting go is not a single act-
it is art made in fragments.
Like tearing a beloved photograph
Pixel by pixel
until smile fades.

It begins with silence,
the kind that grows like moss
over memory.
You stop correcting their name
when people ask.
You stop replaying the what-ifs
like your breath depends on them

It is an unlearning-
of their laugh, their scent,
their rhythm when they walked away.
You erase them
not with fire,
but with absence.

There's no applause in this gallery.
No frame for your pain.
Just the brushstroke of each
morning
where you choose not to look back.

You start to fill your lungs with now,
to water seeds you almost forgot
to plant.
You realize your heart
was never meant to be a museum
of people who left,
but a garden
for who you're becoming.

Letting go isn't moving on-
it's moving in.
into yourself.
into peace.
into the blank space
where you finally
begin again

"Why poetry?" You asked

The answer was immediate, as a flood.

"Because words are my favourite method of creativity. As an artist, I learned there are over 16 million colours and no combination of any number of them will ever mean more than three short words. Of those sixteen million colours only one matters to me. The colour of your eyes; and no painting will ever mean more to me than 'I love you'." I said in reply.

4am tears, undergrad took 5 years
you left in exam season, the feast of my fears
i graduate in 2 weeks, crazy timing
you were mine once upon a winters timing
the blue flowers bloomed like Novalis
i am troubled and dramatic
where art thou romeo
where art thou pair
where art thou romeo
where art thou chèr

The brittle oak legs hold up my taut canvas
They have endured years of feelings without buckling
And here they stand, facing me, asking me
When will you stop?

The splintered paintbrush drips colour on the soil beneath me Unwavering in the palm of my hand, it stays steady, solid
Yet it groans under the pressure of my fingers
Crying out for mercy with every stroke.

The canvas calls, beckoning my delivery of mind and heart
It whispers calm claims of serenity and peaceful hours
Whilst these are compelling words
There's only one use it can give to me.

The paint dries in the southern sun, untouchable but delicate
A portrait so realistic, only her stillness betrayed her
She gazes at me with lapis coloured eyes that don't move
If only I could recall who she was.

The memory of her explodes in my mind like a carpet bomb
But it's stripped away just as soon, ripped from my fingers
A crystalline tear cascades as I pummel the bare sod with fury
But until I remember again,

The brittle oak legs shake violently under my taut canvas.
The bent paintbrush leaks paint onto the soil beneath me.
The canvas whispers, beckoning my delivery of tears and anger.
The paint drips in the moonlight, distorted and warped.

There's a riot behind my ribs
a symphony of shattered thoughts
conducted by anxiety
in a room with no doors.

I wear silence like armor,
but inside-
drums beat with no rhythm,
memories clash like cymbals
and fear hums like a distant engine
that never runs out of gas.

Voices I never invited
shout louder than the ones I need.
They argue in my mind
like lawyers with no case,
pleading guilty to crimes I didn't
commit.

I laugh at the wrong times,
not because I'm happy-
but because laughter is louder
than the screaming
no one else can hear.

Some nights,
the noise is so loud,
I pray for sleep to come
like static to a broken radio.
Not to fix it-
just to blur it out.

But every morning,
I wake to the same frequency-
a mind wired wrong,
but still tuned in.