I’ve drunk enough—
don’t fill my glass again.
All you’ve ever offered,
I’ve gulped down to the grain.
Pleasure’s senses never sate;
for me, they’re just a stain.

I have this body like all others,
a hungry dog
that waits beneath the table
and eats all that falls from it.

Did no one warn you?
Never feed the dog at dinner.
Do it, and he’ll haunt your chair—
whimpering and begging for another taste.

Can’t you see the feast is laid?
Silver platters, crystal bright!
You’re the guest who’s free to taste,
to drink the banquet’s blinding white.

Is it the dog who gets the scraps,
does not care and all devours?
—Exactly!— and once he's finished,
he'll come begging, craving more.

Don’t blame the dog when he invades
your sacred feast.
You shout, you punish his demands,
yet you fed this beast.

Now discern. Divide. Rearrange.
Let each thing keep its name.
The dog in the dog’s domain.
The master at his plate.

Don’t blame me if I am not,  
for in the end, I am by not being  
in order to be.  
Every kiss,  
every flower,  
every stranger’s smile—that’s me.  
Do you see the sun’s shimmer on water?  
That, too, is me.  

And that boy sleeping on the street?  
That mother weeping?  
Those who eat what others threw as trash?  
I am these people as well, I confess.  
Don’t be surprised if my sorrow does not fade,  
for I can be nothing but all these things I am.  

In the things that are alive,  
there is where I live,  
and it is not in death where I die.  
From thing to thing, my clothes change,  
From so much longing, my heart pulses.  

And if one day i ceased to be all this,  
what would remain of me then  
would be merely what i alone am.  
A small thing,  
or nothing.  
For blinded by indifference,  
not even my mirror  
would know who I am.

Perhaps,
to empathise
to understand a little more
is to hurt deeply without a wound
is to hurt deeper than a wound hurts

For you try to search for the wound to find the sword's owner
to explain the scar that's to be there
But you feel your wounds without any
piercing, tearing of skin
without any escaping of blood
without any sword
or the hands that were to hold it
hands that were to be condoned by you.

But there weren't any
how does one hold his own empathy accountable?
his own ability to gaze at this world from different
or perhaps
all of the peaks.

I don’t know why
But I know
Because I feel

Because something pulls me
               To become inverted
                              
                   Motionless
                   Within salt water

To surrender myself
To absorb song
                      Unknown language
                      Through saline

I'm not free to go

into the woods, there's a free --


couple mating there.

To feel deeply in this world is to bleed slowly.
It is to walk through fire with bare feet
while others praise the virtue of numbness.

They say: Don’t love too much.
Don’t care too loudly.
Don’t be the one who stays when it’s easier to leave.

But I have never been able to touch halfway.
My love is ruinous.
I enter like a cathedral collapses—
all at once, with smoke and sacred noise.

I fall in love like it’s a calling,
like God Himself whispered their name into my ribs
and told me:
Here. This one. Burn for this one.

And I do.
Even when the world hands me a thousand reasons not to.
Even when it tells me connection is a game,
hearts are currency,
and tenderness is a flaw
to be corrected.

But I was not made for apathy.
I was not made for clever texts and ghosted evenings.
I was made for aching truth,
for eyes that don’t look away,
for conversations that scrape the soul clean.

I do not want half of anyone.
I want the whole,
even if it wounds me.

Because what is the point of living
if we are not willing to suffer
for something sacred?

They say:
You care too much.
As if it were a weakness.
As if they have not read the Psalms—
as if Christ did not sweat blood in the garden
out of love for a world
that would spit in His face.

There is glory in feeling it all.
Even when it rips you open.
Especially when it rips you open.

Let them scoff.
Let them sleepwalk through their half-lives.
I will keep loving like it matters.
Because it does.
And someone must remember.

I hate it when people look behind bright smiles;
when they look at the underpainting of my heart
and find that there’s nothing behind my laughter
but empty white that lacks dream or purpose
and was only born to remain hidden.