a shadow calling me
not with voice
but with the weight of memory pressed against my spine
a hush that drips from the ceiling
and pools at my feet
I walk toward it
not because I want to
but because the air tastes like unfinished sentences
and I’ve always struggled with leaving things unsaid
it doesn’t beckon
it waits
like a question I forgot to ask
or a name I almost remembered
I think it knows me
the way I flinch at kindness
the way I catalog every silence
as if it might one day bloom into an apology
I think it’s mine
the shadow
the echo
the flicker in the corner of my eye
that disappears when I turn
I keep moving
not forward
not back
just through
through the ache of recognition
through the static of old grief
through the soft collapse of what I thought I was
a shadow calling me
and I answer
by becoming quieter
than I’ve ever been

I arrived barefoot
tongue heavy with borrowed syntax
eyes trained on the flicker between gestures
the way a hand hesitates before reaching
the way silence folds itself into a question.

I mistook bruises for constellations
mapped them across the skin like ancient routes
each one a pilgrimage
each one a failed translation.

I thought pain had grammar
that longing could be conjugated
into something less feral.

the heart is not a scroll.
it does not unroll neatly.
it bleeds through the margins
smudges the ink
laughs at the scholar in me
who still believes in clarity.

I touched someone once
and felt their grief like static
a hum beneath the ribs
a Morse code of everything unsaid.

I tried to decode it
but the symbols kept shifting
love became hunger
hunger became apology
apology became a door
I could not open.

I am still learning
that some hieroglyphs are meant to be lived
not read.
that some wounds speak in tongues
only the body understands.
that to be human
is to misinterpret
and keep interpreting
until the ache becomes a kind of fluency.

i have tiny jars that are shelved
perfectly inside my brain
from category a to z,
sorted by themes,
and from one to a hundred
—a scale of how painful
life is in my repetitive experience.

i keep all my memories sealed
like a handful of fireflies shoved in a jar
that only live for three days;
i may forget every scenario with ease
but never the dying flicker—the feeling
that grow dim in each canister.

god, how fragile am i that it only takes
a trigger for each glass to combust tragically,
good thing i'm the only one
who knows how to pull it.
     i wonder which repressed emotions
     are going to choke me violently tonight.

❝ while he runs from darkness
  she purposefully turns off her light
  he saves her flicker and makes it burn

  like a california fire guided by his wind
  she spreads through the mainland
  curving through the hidden crevices of the world
  her scorching heat;
  felt and seen and adored

  as he runs from the darkness,
  her light continues to burn a fire blue
  the shadows slowly melt away from her touch
  and he feels her warmth and basks in it

  she thought she has saved him from the monsters
  she thought she has saved him enough to stop running

  but the shadows crept back in
  slowly, until it consumed him entirely
  and off the ledge he went

  her savior,
  reduced to nothing but a pool of dusk
  and emptiness
  and sadness

  she was but a flicker but he preserved her
  a flicker which continued to burn in her heart

  so she savored the beauty of his grey tones;
  found and accepted his darkness
  in all the bright places ❞

Human life is funny. I tend to think of us as candles.
And we flicker.
We’re small.
We die.

But, you feed that candle, it can be a fire.
And we burn.
We blind.
We remember.

I could write
on emotion alone.
Through bitterness,
I sought beauty.
With rage,
I expressed
the torrent within.
All was aflame,
all had burned brightly.

But now,
it is naught but a flicker.
I pass time quietly,
as the ash of past emotions
blanket the landscape with grey.
I am tired.
I fear I may
never recover.