When the earth is no longer a womb,
just a shriek and whistle of once uttered prayer—
a long,
puncturing howl of everything
that was once you
turned into casualties of silence,
then you know
that death has arrived,
noiselessly,
silent as a missile.

All the clamor outside-
it’s the hibakujumoku,
(the survivor trees)
insisting on life
within the blast radius
of your heart.

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?

A shadow lingers, heavy and cold,
Never a story of joy retold.
Tablets lined in a fragile row,
In their silence, what do they know?
Dreams dissolve in a bitter hue,
Emotions dulled, both false and true.
Promises whispered: "You’ll feel whole,"
Relief bottled, sold to the soul.
Every smile feels borrowed, thin,
Shaky hands hide storms within.
Still, we swallow, day by day,
A search for light in skies of gray.
No cure, just balance, a fragile dance,
To numb the ache, one last chance.

You take your time to write yourself a muse
Upon the brittle branches in the August sky
Colours of lilac and violet dance across the sky
The sun settling in the distant end of the earth
You write the stories of the world you lost
The world that could have been upon yours
And I write to you in moments of hurried frenzy
And blissful fragments of fragility that laid its self across my body
The August sky,
You take your time to be as such
And the bottle of wine across the line of glasses that sat on the dinner table
How can one not feel younger in the presence of being loved
Of walls that to be brought down from being guarded for one to long of a moment
A moment that became a lifetime all the August months ago
A cold August it was, to dance around fire embers in the hopes they’d touch your heart and you could be as one in the flames

Ice is cracking
Under the immense
And unforgiving
Weight of lead skies.

The world is falling,
Plunged into
The vast and punishing
Waters below.

Her lips dissolving
With the cosmic
And unwavering
Chill of the void.

A last breath reverberating
Below the colossal
And vengeful echoing
Of a final word.

Uttered in mourning
Of a momentary
And fragile
Life.