While you are grieving your life,
Someone grieved their loved one, gone too soon.
While you are crying over your mere existence,
Someone is fighting death, waiting for a boon.

While you lament the things you did and the mistakes you made,
Someone is wishing to have the opportunities of messing up the way you do.
While you mourn what life could have been,
Someone is longing for more time to be true.

While you crib about the friendships and relationships lost,
Someone is waiting to hold their loved one in a hospital hall;
Against the cold and trembling wall,
They whisper silent prayers, giving their all.

As you sob over another day not lived well, questing your mere existence,
Know that someone, somewhere, wants to trade places with you this instance.

what an empty epitaph that is—
the art of noticing,
fragility of life.

does iron fear the rot
that overtakes it in the moisture the world provides?

it is what it is,
but does it have to be?

plots of the unknown—how can i thrive?

liminal space of some sort, where i've found myself this once,
and all the other once’s.
i’m still in the spirit,
but the dead don’t return.

can’t find a body—everyone has souls,
not a single empty one.

i have stars on my ceiling.

can you hurt a spirit,
wound it like you’d wound a body?

find me a confessional—
i’d like to admit to my sins.

long since it has felt
like grief lives in the walls of this room where i reside.

you write and you put it out
and it’s like baring yourself in the naked truth
and ugly to everyone outside.
i intend to stay hidden—
in a shirt twice the size of me,
a pair of pajamas i should’ve thrown away a while ago,
and the same damaged pair of glasses—
except they’re light
and they feel mine,
with the same teddy and old laptop.

needed this to be a list of prompts.
found it making sense instead.
my life’s woven this way—
of symphonies, perhaps i’ll leave unsaid.

uncertainty begging for understanding,
faith asking to be relieved.
i can fit into the same years ' worth of old clothes.
have i never really grown, all this while?

i’ll save this to push it down the bin,
choke as every word comes out to spill—
the darkest of secrets, epiphanies of the night.
you breathe in the love,
tend to forget its might.

half-eaten swiss roll, rotting with sour cream.
a modified bunny made out of clay.
purple tulips—
but they’re fake.
i like the color grey.
cherry bombing every lie.
kiss till you’re numb,
dissociate into the wild.

what speaks—and what swallows?
golden halo of the angels,
wings tainted in red,
singing siren sounds,
myths ruled over, unclad.

i broke my old pair of glasses.
they’re beyond repair now.

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.

Oh Darling, Oh Daisy
As pretty as a pink peony,
Yet, your petals are wilting, dear,
Stems a little frail, wracked.

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
As sharp as a red rosy,
Yet, don’t they see, dearest,
Thorns tracing those fragile strands?

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
As sweet as a light *****,
Yet, don’t they see, dear?
Tears slipping, draping a silk on your chest.

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
As clever as late Nancy,
Yet, is your nectar still
Sweet as hot honey

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
Ask of the flies, just once, dear,
Do they taste the bright red
Of copper candy?

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
As graceful as old lacy
Do you dance, dear,
To the screams that hum a melody?

Oh Daisy, Oh Daisy
As naive as a little daisy,
Are you certain what awaits you?
Dear Daisy.

We are so fragile.
We could break at any moment.
God could leave us scattered on the ground
like broken, old, used toys.

God is like a child:
Tsunamis his tantrums.
Humans his marionettes.
Humans    
      are          
             God’s
         voodoo
    dolls.

And he plays with us;
He stitches red needles into our bodies.

I think there is nothing left in mine.
No filling.
No nothing.
I am empty inside.

I built this house
Of glass with stone
I watch you break it with my bones

Fingertip reaches—rose glass-fractured sky,
but the world keeps turning, indifferent, blind.
We watch, we wait, we sift through the fallen ashes—
searching for warmth in a fire long gone.

Ghosts of wanting drift through the ebb,
feet sinking in time’s marrow-thick river.
Clawing at the hilltop, slipping, gasping—
but do we climb or just fall slower?

Love hums then shatters,
echoes down corridors we dare not tread.
The oaken river swallows its dead,
birds fall southward, wings brittle with regret.

Winter comes for all—darkness too.
Light flickers, just out of reach,
a mirage for the desperate, the reckless,
those who still run, still chase, still bleed.

But what if the answers unravel the mind?
What if understanding breaks us instead?
What if we lose ourselves,
seeking someone else to make us whole?

Is life’s significance just a joke told in passing,
laughter drowned in the howl of the void?
If misery loves company,
why do so many stand alone?