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There are rooms I do not enter, doors I welded shut with bone and sinew, memories pressed between the walls like dried insects, fragile, rotting, never quite dead.

The past does not sleep.

It moves beneath my skin, a rhythm of hands that never let go, voices that coil around my throat, laughter that sounds like breaking glass.

I walk through mirrors and find someone else staring back, eyes that don't belong to me, a mouth that speaks in riddles, a face I've tried to carve away.

But the past grows back like ivy, crawling, strangling, consuming.

There were nights that never ended, silent wars fought in locked rooms, secrets swallowed like shards of ice, cold, cutting, sinking deep.

I have learned to live as a whisper, to step lightly through the wreckage, to fold myself into the smallest spaces, as if disappearing could make me safe.

But echoes do not die. They linger, they gnaw, they fester. And in the quiet, when the world goes still, they find their way back home.
Man Feb 9
I challenge you to broaden your views
If you are one who is adversarial,
But should you shun competition
I welcome you to engage in cooperation.
That we may learn from each other,
Sharing our personal perspectives.
If I had ventured to say
That there is no such sturdier foundation
From which upon to build on,
Would you call me crazy?
Perhaps, in a pitiful way,
You would refer to me
As an optimist
Or as daydreaming & faraway.
It's just not realistic, not here or today.
Cooler heads do not prevail,
Safety leveraged over risk is gay,
Precaution is something for *******.
What bullish nonsense and pigheadedness,
Are you not freely disposed toward exercising
Those of your most sacred rights & liberties?
Is too heavy the weight of vulnerability?
Emma Dec 2024
There’s a thread on her wrist,
red like pomegranate seeds bursting—
three knots tight as a mother’s secret,
three wishes pressed between breaths
when the world looks away.
She whispers into the glitches—
the way the sky skips like a scratched vinyl,
the way the ground hums
just before the fall.

She doesn’t blink anymore.
It’s all there,
in the corner of your mouth,
in the pauses where words drown themselves.
She hears the notes you never played,
sees the shadow in the mirror’s gasp,
speaks to the silence like a sister.

The bracelet taught her the language of sap
and stone and the ocean’s bite.
It sings in loops, an ancient chorus—
not yours, not mine,
but something older than the first mistake.

Three knots, she says,
for the door that never stays shut,
for the stars stitched into her palms,
for the moments where time hiccups and forgets itself.

And when she speaks,
it’s not a voice—it’s a frequency,
a vibration you feel in your ribs
like a forgotten childhood song.
She turns her wrist—
the red thread catches the light—
and the world unravels for her,
one gift, one glitch, one truth at a time.
lola Dec 2024
Ghosts are real.
Haunted by something long gone,
Dead, I haunt myself.
Ghosts, they float in my room,
Bouncing off the walls,
Surrounding me with what once was.

Eight years old,
I stand in the corner, crying,
It echoes in my head—
Haunted by my past.

Ghosts are real.
They don’t break glasses or close doors,
They evoke fear much greater than an unexplainable incident.
They haunt you with a cruel reality—
Something far worse than floating books.
The truth.
I am haunted. By the truth.
Emma Kate Oct 2024
Claim my burden but never

offer your shoulder

to confide, 

to cry,

But you have no tears to spare.

Trying to eat the slice of pie

I spent hours baking,

you spent seconds eating.

Those peaches were freshly picked!

Bathed in bicarb! 

I scrubbed the dirt

until it was nothing but

another piece of myself

for you to ******.

I do not swallow sweetness, 

I choke on copper,

throat bursting to the brim

with pennies-

the same pennies you offer

in penance 

for the burden of lead that

nooses my neck. 

You wear it by choice;

by Gold, 

by Glory,

believing our blood is the same drop split in two.

Though it is proven to be yours for the taking,

you will be tasked with breaking each 

frozen finger, 

forced to pry your prize from

my bruised palms.
Thoughts on the complicated entanglement of familial ties, and just how sticky the web that holds us hostage can feel.
Emma Kate Sep 2024
Please weave your
nerves along
My bones,
my marrow is
your supper.
Please wrap your
never ending
absoluteness around
My eternity,
my endlessness is
your reward.
Some human connections feel so intense that it becomes hard to deny the existence or magic.
Emma Kate Sep 2024
Suppose I am just blue.
pale, hardly replicable.
Neither black; nor white but
lacking saturation
nevertheless.
Late night thoughts.
Emma Kate Sep 2024
I tell them to watch a movie- that one when the sun sets like aloe on their scalded skin, that one where after sunset, the guy kills himself. 

But I don't tell them that part, I simply lather the lotion thicker, suffocate their burn and boast about the healing powers of cinema I so humbly wish to share.

In honesty, there is little need for conviction as I so kindly spread love on their wound, proposing the perfect solution, a comforting press to the chest.

On condition, they are instructed to watch alone; travel to Ankara and snuggle beneath cloudy blue skies. They must take extra care. And under no circumstances should they tamper with the blooming blisters- they should let the summer breeze do all the work. 

They trust me, pathetically, even as the hours wane on, even as my waxy ointment melts to oily paraffin and slips far, far away from the wound. 

I doubt that they even notice, but I know that with five minutes to spare, all hope of healing will be held out of reach- especially as my soothing facade shatters beneath blinding strobes, as my fibs fade and salt sprinkles their skin with the promise of a permanent scar, fragile tissue that will surely wither with the sun for an eternity to come. 

The credits roll and so do the tears, until their cheeks are so stained, so branded with hollowness that all left to do is howl out for the end to near.

Now, they feel like I do, and we will suffer a lifetime of sorrow in unity. It makes me feel a little better.
I watched a particularly guttural movie- I have since convinced more than a handful to do the same. I know what I'm doing, why do I continue?
Emma Kate Sep 2024
I was wedged between blue leather, scribbling axes into the shape of question marks; and you were laid on blue woven wicker, snoring and many miles away.
Now, I am sinking into fluffy blue polyester; and you are sleeping on a table carved of icy blue steel.
It is strange, isn't it?
I did not know you then, I will never know you now.
Reflections of childhood bubbling after a death in the family.
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