Water holds no loyalties to memory.  
It will swallow your name whole,  
Churn it into a language  
Only stones can decipher,  
Then spit it out as foam—  
A frothy eulogy  
No one asked for.  

It moves like betrayal dressed in silk,  
Soft to the touch  
But sharp enough to carve bones into weapons.  
Do not mistake its stillness for mercy.  
Even in its quiet,  
It dreams of drowning cities  
And filling lungs with liquid sermons.  

Water does not mourn.  
It erases.  
It is the great unmaker,  
Pulling the faces of lovers,  
The hands of mothers,  
And the footprints of gods  
Into its endless, churning womb.  

I’ve seen it carry grief like a crown,  
Rivers wearing the ashes of cathedrals  
And the charred wood of promises  
As though they were jewels.  
And yet, it forgets.  
It will forget you,  
Just as it forgot the mountains that once knelt to it,  
Just as it forgot the villages  
That tried to tame its chaos.  

Drink from it if you dare.  
It will not quench your thirst;  
It will bloom in your throat,  
A garden of salt and regret,  
Each drop a seed of storms.  

Even the sky cannot hold it.  
When water falls,  
It claws its way back to the earth,  
Filling every crack with its liquid hunger.  
It breaks its mirrors on the surface,  
Each shard a fractured memory  
It refuses to keep.  

It whispers,  
But it never listens.  
You could spill your secrets into it,  
And it would carry them away  
Not as treasures, but as burdens.  
It does not care.  
It has no need for your pain.  

Water is the poet of forgetting,  
Writing its verses on the soft shores of time,  
Then dragging the sand away grain by grain  
Until no trace remains.  
It cannot love you.  
It cannot hate you.  
It only exists to move forward,  
Always forward,  
Toward an ocean that never knew your name.

Here I am,
a tangle of roots
buried deep
and reaching down
deeper,
looking for a sign of life.

But no,
I sprawl and
twist around,
widdershins,
round and round
the battering thump
breaking the walls
under my flesh.

My waking hours
remember,
thick with the weight
of words left unsaid,
an iron on my tongue.
Unmoved.
Unperturbed.
Stagnant and decaying,
until I’m a stranger
to my own voice.
A crow lost in a cornfield
lulled by a scarecrow’s
siren song.

Like a crow,
plumes as dark
as a saint ‘s hope
wandering in the arms of limbo.
Wings bruised
for hammering obstinate bars,
voice hoarse for singing the blues
over dissonant chords.

Over and over again.
“Like a broken record,” they say.
Singing the same old song.
I have been.
Songs like plastic bags
of cans that digs into a tender
palm until the blood supply is cut.

What does the sky
Feel like on my wings
The stretch of endless blue
Soft wind threading through my feathers?
Tell me, the feeling has long escaped me.
Emptiness ringing in my ear
in the space between
where song once lived

Time has a way
Of erasing memories,
Of erasing wounds
and hardening them into scars,
of stepping into clear water
and muddying it.

Now the air is stale,
silence dense,
solitude burning red,
my bones rubbing against
my soul,
Leaving blisters and scuffs.

These heavy eyes,
the sky’s allure has faded from their gaze.
they have learned to shrink
into this smallness.
no horizon here
only walls,
and the dust taste of dullness
is vapid.

How I miss
how the sun makes
the salt on my skin rise,
or how the rain can seep
into my thoughts until
it colors it sad.

Now, there’s just fields of
milky grayness, playing labyrinth
until I reach the end,
only to be devoured again.

And sadness is too mundane a word,
at most it’s an espresso
that keeps you awake,
A defibrillator,
that jolt that makes eternity
an agony.

I am but a riddle I cannot solve

He fell for her the moment he saw her at the Carnival. Entriguing, yet Mysterious, Enchanting, yet Seductive. He couldn't keep his eyes off of her, like he was in a trance. He just had to get to know her. He wanted to get close to her. Curiosity kills the cat, and he was very curious to know who this mysterious woman was. It was something about her that he can't help but to be drawn to her. Like a Love spell was cast upon him.  So, he tried to follow her through the crowds of Happy People as he swiftly moved through the crowds trying to keep up, it seems as if she moved farther and farther. The more he moved the farther she moved. By the time he made it through the crowds to a clear distance, she was gone. He was disappointed. It had seemed as if she had suddenly dissipated into thin air. Was she really there or was he looking at a apparition only he can see, as if she was trying to get his attention??? He knows he not crazy, or that his mind is messing with him, He knows what he saw, like an Angel before his very eyes!!! She could've been an Angel in Disguise, He has No idea where she could've gone. Could He have been dreaming, Well, He is wide awake. That same night while sleeping, he sees her in his dreams, Is she trying to give him some type of message??? He just didn't understand. So, finally, He just forgot about her after some time. About a month or so later, he decided to stop by a Coffee shop for coffee before heading to work. As, he waited in line, something caught his attention, as he looked to the right, There she was, the mysterious woman from the Carnival!!! His eyes had widened, he just couldn't believe it. It was really her, sitting alone, enjoying her Caramel Macchatto. She felt his glance, looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back, he grabbed his coffee, and felt it was okay to approach her. So, he did, and he asked was it okay to sit down, and she said yes. Since discovery of her at the Carnival, they started talking. Come to find out, she's very distanced in the same area as he, and they have a lot in common. This to him was Love at first sight, He searched for her, and actually gave up trying to find her, however it was fate that brought them together ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️


B.R.
Date: 8/13/2024

The captain, withered and old, was trapped in his house
Missing the sea, like old captains do.
                                                                    Suddenly,
An earthquake shook the land, and he believed
He was back in the ocean, and a wave had broken
His ship.
                  The old captain went out to the streets
Shouting at his crew i.e. the passing pedestrians
To shape up.
                         Though cars zoomed past, he walked on
To the middle of the road, thinking the vehicles
Were dolphins greeting him.
                                                      He tried to kiss them,
And when a cop stopped him, and dragged him away
He yelled “Pirate!” and hit the cop on the head,
And ran away.
                           Last I heard, he’d drowned in a puddle.
A fitting end.