Hey There!!
Calm and collected! You sure?
Look at you—
All humble and fake.
Is that all it takes
To be a human?

Too naïve and fragile,
Yet you struggle and survive.
You sure this is the right way to thrive?

Don’t be arrogant,
Think of a solution,
Battle your demons and
Don’t act impulsive…
...

But where’s the fun in that?
You think and think and think, and come up with that?
Is it your stomach grumbling, or
Is it your brain sighing?

Come on, don’t "think" now.
I’ll give you the answer—
The pleasure is all mine.

I was there,
Filled with compassion, adoring your design.
While you were a little boy,
You looked ferocious. You were determined!

Twenty years later,
You feel all worthless.
All you do is whine.

Where is the charisma?
Where is the shine?

It pains me to tell you this,
But we are running out of time.
Give me the control, and
Wait for my sign.

I promise,
Your presence won’t ever be ridiculed,
Your eminence will never be outshined.

Don’t ridicule me with such flattery.
Won’t you listen to me, your majesty?
Sure, you feel sad and shattered,
But wouldn’t you rather be this way?

Mistaking growth for tragedy,
They say:
Relinquish your heart from mockery.
Mayday—
Frightening is your disgraceful savagery!

Stop with the excuse,
Don’t loosen the noose.
You want a better life?
Just hop in and pursue!

Sure, what he says is tempting,
But I’d rather be here, presenting
To you,
The answer to your pain and resentment.

You shouldn’t be here lamenting.
Mark my words and heed what I say.
Don’t listen to that coward—
Here, let me make your way.

It’s bound to be suspenseful.
It’s bound to be cruel.
Don’t look at me like that—
You know it all too well.

I’m the feeling you long lost,
Yet you never gave up on trust.
I’m Hope,
The miraculous outburst.

Life is tough,
Not a whack-a-mole game.
I hope you understand:
Listening to him is just in vain.

Now, don’t accuse me of temptation—
It’s my very nature!
Can’t call it quits now, can I?
I guess I should show some determination.

I was born at the dawn of creation.
To put it simply:
Would you rather choose me and feel this soothing sensation,
Or
Choose him and relive all those dreadful accusations?

The decision is for you to make.
I’m just as important as he is.
I put in all my stake.

And you,
You are pretty mean to me, but I respect you for that.
If it wasn’t for you, I’d have gone, “Boom” Splat!

It’s cause with you comes the hardship,
And with you comes the wrath.

People get frustrated,
Desperate to look for a path.

The look on their face and the pressure on the back—
How can I miss such delicacy?
Oh! How amusing is that!

You want me to move away?
Na-uh, I ain’t doin’ that!

Making a mockery of your own kind?
Stalemating me?
Just so you can outshine?

That’s some pretty ***** trick you got up your sleeve.
Yet you go around accusing me of being a thief.

Unreasonable, isn’t it?
When he secures something,
When he gets a win—
You float like a butterfly.
You become the limelight.
You become “the thing.”

You take away the credit,
You took away everything!

But when he gets down—
Tarnished, hopeless, and doing everything on a whim—
When he succumbs to despair,
Who’s there with him?

I used to respect you for being tough.
Look at you now, coming at your brother like that.

I’m also something.
Just like you,
I too was given a task.

At least I’m honest.
I know I can cause pain.
There’s a term called “False Hope”—
Ever heard anyone feeling “False Pain”?

Life’s not a fairy tale.
I know, alright.
I can give him happiness,
I can make him smile.

I know I’m tempting him, but
It’ll be worth a while.
All you did was strangle him.
All he felt was not right.

I just wanna control him,
Make him feel alright.
Don’t give him no false hope.
Don’t make him feel traumatized.

It’s okay to be heartless.
It’s okay for him to hit rock bottom once in a while.

If Hope can flourish him and it can make him shine,
Do take the role of father figure—
It’s your duty to guide.

I understand your goal,
And I won’t hold you back.
I was born a pushover,
And I’m fine being that.

Don’t misunderstand me—
I ain’t plain as that.

I’m sinister.
I’m always there to keep you on track.
I’m always there to ensure he never gets up on his back.

I’m the hurdle he must clear.
I’m the obstacle he must pass.

And he needs you, brother,
To overcome me—
To overcome my wrath.

“With that said, whom do you choose?” both said and looked onto me.
As bewildered as I was,
I was more confused.

To choose among these two isn’t child’s play.
One will live, but one will be slain.
Like two counterforces, both can’t coexist—much to my dismay.

I thought and was about to choose,
When I suddenly opened my eyes, stunned.

Was it a dream, or have I finally succumbed
To insanity?

I pondered about the question both had asked,
And I realized I was outclassed—
Not by the amount of reasons,
Not by the sheer pressure.

I simply couldn’t choose.
Should I opt for the king of treason to live a comfortable life, but with no rhyme or reason,
Or
Should I choose the voice that you hear when you loosen the noose on a rope?

I was uncertain before, and I’m uncertain now.
Maybe someday I’ll prosper.
Maybe someday I’ll be happier.

Until then, it’s me—
And my Uncertainties.

                                                                                      -Asher Graves

10 days,
and 20 nights.

Sleeping,
but never resting.

I close my eyes,
tell my mind,
"You must stop!".

Silence arrives,
the calm before the disaster.

What will happen tomorrow?
And your love?
The payment?
The salary?

I want my body
to melt into the sheets,
to receive an embrace from the bed.

For the pillow
to absorb my thoughts.

For my soul to leave,
and return with the dawn.

I want to sleep,
so that in the morning I wake up,
as if yesterday
had never existed.

I have worn a hundred faces,
Yet none have ever been my own.
Laughter slips from my lips like borrowed words,
Like a hollow ghost of grief and shame.

I walk among them, unseen, unheard,
A ghost with skin, a breathing blur.
They call my name, but it is not mine,
Just a sound, just a curse, just a whisper in time.
They speak of love, they speak of light,
Yet all I know is endless night.

Love was a language I never learned,
Only silence ever spoke to me.
I reached for warmth, I reached for light,
But even the sun recoiled from me.

And if I vanish—
If I slip between the cracks of existence,
Will the world even pause?
Will the sky lose its color?
Will anyone know that I was ever here at all?

I am no longer human.
Perhaps, I never was.

the noise never fades;
my poise takes the bait;
in the halls of liberation,
i submit to my fate.

i took a solemn vow:
to be ‘holier-than-thou’.
neither wrong, nor right,
i knew, until now.

i failed to see a cause;
the effect? - a terrible loss;
blinded by obsessions,
i never took a pause.

it’s been a while since the fall,
when i sprung to a brawl
with my virtues, unmasked -
and caved in to nightfall.

it all seems a blur;
it’s ‘bout time i concurred:
my reason to exist
shall always be a curse.

The kid in me stares,
through the wreckage I call my life.

His lips tremble with questions
I’ll never have the courage to answer.

His eyes do the screaming—
a silent howl that claws through my chest
and leaves me gasping for air I can’t find.
He stands there, barefoot and trembling,
holding pieces of me I swore I’d never let go of.

He’s asking me questions I don’t have answers to.
Why did I leave him in the dark?
Why did I trade his light for this hollow shell?
Why did I let the world win?
Why?
I want to tell him it wasn’t my fault—
that the cracks started small,
and before I knew it,
I was too broken to hold him.
But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?

He only knows that I was supposed to protect him.
And I didn’t.

I left him.
I let him to rot in the shadows of my survival.
I buried him under all the things I couldn’t bear to feel.
And now he stands here,
small and fragile and impossibly naive,
holding my guilt in his tiny hands
like it’s something he’s willing to forgive.

But I can’t forgive myself.
Not for what I’ve done to him.
Not for the way I’ve become everything
he used to fear.
Not for the way I let the world cut him up,
piece by piece,
while I stood by and called it growing up.

And God,
I want to tell him I’m sorry.
But what’s the point?
Sorry doesn’t unburn the bridges.
Sorry doesn’t bring back the innocence
I traded for armor that doesn’t even fit.

He watches me burn,
and I can see it—
the confusion, the betrayal,
the faint, flickering hope
that I might still save us.

But how do I tell him
that the flames are mine?
That I struck the match,
fed the fire,
let it consume everything we were
just to survive?

He doesn’t know
what it feels like to be gutted by people who swore they loved you.
He doesn’t know
how heavy it gets when you carry the weight of everyone’s indifference.
He doesn’t know
that there’s no bottom to this kind of pain—
just an endless free fall.

But he will.
One day, he will.

And when that day comes,
he’ll look at me again,
with those same pleading eyes,
that same puzzled look.
And I’ll still have no answers.
Just this fire,
and the ashes of who we might’ve been.

I want to scream at him,
shake him,
make him understand—
that this wasn’t the plan,
that I didn’t choose this.
But the truth is heavier than any excuse.
I broke him.
And I know it.

He looks at me with pleading eyes,
as if I can fix this.
As if I can go back.
But how do I tell him that I’m too far gone?
That the fire raging inside me
isn’t something I want to put out?
That I’ve grown to love the way it burns,
even as it devours what’s left of us?

He steps closer,
and I flinch.
I can’t bear it—
the hope in his eyes,
the quiet belief that I can still be something better.
Because I can’t.
Because I won’t.

He reaches out,
his tiny fingers brushing against my burnt skin,
and for a moment,
just a moment,
I feel it.
The weight of what I’ve lost.
The pieces of myself I’ve scattered to the wind,
never expecting that one day I’d want them back.

But I can’t hold him.
I can’t let him in.
Because if I do,
he’ll see what I’ve become.
He’ll see the ashes,
the emptiness,
where a heart used to be.

And he doesn’t deserve that.
He doesn’t deserve me.

So I turn away.
I let the fire take me.
I let the flames rise higher,
consuming what’s left of the kid
I couldn’t protect.

Behind me,
I hear him whisper.
It’s not anger,
or hatred,
or even sadness.
It’s worse.
It’s hope.

“Come back,” he says.
“Please.”

But I don’t.
I can’t.
Because the truth is,
I don’t know how to.
And maybe I never will.

So I just watch him watching me,
until he fades into the smoke,
leaving me alone in the ashes—
a stranger to the boy
I was supposed to protect.

I look for him in the mirror,
but he’s gone.
And all that’s left staring back at me
is the shell of someone
he used to believe in.

One day, you wake up
and you’re not you anymore.
You look in the mirror,
but the eyes are empty,
like someone else is living there.

You didn’t notice it happening,
how you gave away pieces of yourself
just to fit, just to please.
A thousand small moments,
a smile you didn’t mean,
a “yes” when you screamed “no” inside.

You thought you were strong.
But you let them carve you down,
chisel by chisel,
until there’s nothing left but the shell
of who you used to be.

It doesn’t happen all at once.
It’s the slowest kind of death,
the kind where you’re still breathing,
but you’re gone.

And the worst part?
You did it to yourself.
Not with a knife,
but with silence,
with pretending,
with forgetting what you’re worth—
until one day,
you can’t even remember
who you used to be.

you’ve lost track of who you were —
a shadow,
a stranger in your own reflection.

you’ve erased the memory
of who you were,
now lost to the emptiness
you created.

i see flaws everywhere:

the skewed clock on the plastered wall;
the faces flashing past the curtain call;
the faithless creed of heathens, and sleazeballs;
the smiles that hide the symptoms of withdrawal;

i see laws bent out of shape:

the policemen advantaging off exposed women;
the two-faced lawyers in courts, who summon -
the men questioned of their dignity, and religion;
the reporters come drooling, for a big fat commission.  

i seek help, in vain:

the therapists diagnose me for a cerebral disorder;
they fail to put their words in the right order -
to put me at ease in the right frame of mind, so -
i accept my flaws under a contract, signed.

prone to narcolepsy;
a second thought, like -
a can of pepsi.
sold my peace for
a moment’s notice;
for the panic that utters -
‘you better not blow this!’

i sulk, i cry, i moan… it rains -
the clouds pull closer to
the gravity of my pain;
the birds find shelter at
the neighbour’s windowpane -
they leave me to dry in a room -
terrified, and insane.

i can feel the bed
warming up to my shape;
there’s a stain on the pillow
that reeks of sour grapes -
i try to rub it off,
but give in to my human make:
i curse the neighbour’s birds -
through a ****
on the moss-green drapes.

i hope it’s worth it:
all the trials, and the errors.
i long for a night,
devoid of terror -
so i may sing for a while,
with nothing to lose;
‘to be, or not to be’ -
left to me - to choose.

Standing on the mountain, looking towards the sea
Knowing they’ll both be here long after me
How long have I been here, how long will I stay
Is the time that’s left more than the time that’s passed away?

When I was young, I felt that I’d been here before
It all seems familiar, but I couldn’t say for sure
I don’t know if I’m lost, or I’m just getting one more glance
Or could it just be that God is giving me one more chance

Why we’re here is an idea that nobody is meant to know
The only fact we have is that one day we’ll have to go
Tomorrow is something that one day I won’t get to see
And my Yesterdays will be the only definition there is of me

I’m an old soul, but my body still feels young
My mind has heard the song, but the song I’ve never sung
Time knows all of the things that are still meant to be
Am sometimes I wonder, did Time forget about me?