I long to write beautiful words,
That convey love and things like birds.
Poetry inspired by life,
Stories and tales of overcoming strife.

Instead, the words flow from darkness,
Metaphors oozing harshness.
Words inspired by pain and death.
Conveying my struggles through every shallow breath.

Songs and ballads about glowing angels,
Not demons and monsters portraying dangers.
Hopefully, one day flowers will start to sprout,
From the dying fire, I only knew about.

Words of life and glittering hope,
Emerging from darkness, my blindness will grow.
Music of old heartbreak transforming slowly,
Echoing through my paper and healing mellowly.

They do not speak of dying,
not in the quiet grocery line,
not beneath the flicker of café lights,
not when the sky loosens its robe of stars,
and oh, what a grave mistake.

For death is not some villain in a cloak,
but the oldest truth,
the shadow stitched to your soles,
the hush behind the heartbeat.
And if you dare to meet it,
not with dread, but with reverence,
you live.

Not someday.
Now.

With a fire that does not ask for permission,
you will step out of the anger rooms,
shed the shroud of “what will they think,”
and walk barefoot into your wild life,
untamed, imperfect, and exquisitely yours.

A child who has tasted death’s breath,
returns with eyes older than calendars,
not brave, but lucid.
Not reckless, but awake.

You see, it is not courage,
to sip the rain like wine,
to laugh so hard the stars come closer,
it is logic.
It is sense.
It is the compass of those who know the road ends,
so they sing while walking.

So love.
Not as a performance, but as a pulse.

Learn.
Not for praise, but for wonder.

Taste.
The peach, the kiss, the grief, the salt.

And leave behind no legacy but this:

That you were here.
Truly.
Madly.
Moment by moment, as a brief candle,
burning unapologetically in the wind.

When the world grows
too loud or too fast,
it’s a good idea
to take a step back
and huddle away
into an empty space
where neither sound
nor time
can hurt you,

let silence envelop
your soul—not your self.

Eventually
the grass will grow
and the wind will settle,
all will slow
like in a lush meadow,

and far away
will the struggle drift.

The sky will grow white
with clouds that never rain,
gardens will grow green
without a single ****,

the sun will beat down
not bullets but care,
that nurtures the grass blades
through growth
and lifts the vapour into
the air.

Dimensions and galaxies will
pause,
for the universe cannot
feed.

And all will be.

Our worlds are not the same
You are preparing for a role, and I try to show up for life.
You want to change the country and make it a better place,
And I strive to find peace and live another day.

You want the respect, the prestige, the satisfaction of doing it all.
I just want to exist and breathe without giving up once and for all.
You’ve had a goal since you were nine, a vision etched in your mind.
I still don’t know what I want or how to truly grind.

You are the golden child, and I, the black sheep.
You did everything right, and I… ever do anything right?
You got the sought-after degree from the most difficult college to get into.
I, too, went to a sought-after college, but not a sought-after degree.

You’ve proved your mettle more than once.
I’ve never had a chance — nor did I want one.
You plan your whole career in advance.
I go with the everyday ebb and flow of life.

You are the calm, chill guy with a great social life.
I am the sometimes anxious, often flustered girl with hardly any friends.
You are the light of the party, and I, somewhere in the shadows.
Yet our worlds met and collided.

You chose to see the me I hardly saw,
Believed in me when no one did — not even I.
You saw the light that I never could,
And were there on days no one else was.

You were literally there for me on my darkest nights,
My knight in shining armor, bringing in some light.
You kept me from consuming myself and believed in me
When hardly anyone ever saw any glee.

You brought out a side of me I never knew existed.
It was just like a Wattpad story — just a little twisted.
For it ended sooner than it lasted,
For you left, long before I wanted.

Those days, I used to think you were replaceable.
But how can someone ever replace a part of my soul?
A place that you’ve taken — and is yours.
It will always be yours, whether you like it or not.

How do I tell my heart a different tale
When it’s already accepted you in every part of the sail?
How do I replace my anchor — and where do I find one —
When you chase your dreams, and I try finding mine?

Why are things not different?
Why are you not in my life —
The way I wanted, the way you promised?
Because I need you more, now that I am my calmest.

A tiny spider's silk unravels steadily, believing
It would be picked by hands so tender to its heart,
Instead of fortuital encountered
By a completely crushing stranger's palm.
The loosened strain that flows in open wilderness
Had better learn to weave a big, wide web,
Before it gets too sticky at the other end,
And guts are scattered all across the green duvet.

i don’t think i ever truly left the girl i was.
there are still small pieces of her everywhere i look
her scissors under my pillow
and her posters on my walls of the sad music she used to listen to
i think she left her antiseptic cream somewhere
maybe under my bed
or in my closet like another one of the skeletons
and sometimes i’ll replay her playlists
not to become her again but to remember what i lost in her
some precious part of myself
i’m desperately trying to grow back-
rebuilding it
from her eyeliner
and her blood-stained tissues
the marks she left on my body
and the marks she left on my heart
everything she took
and everything she gave

There were words I loosed like doves in flame,
Believing then they sang my name.
They circled truths I thought were stone,
But time has taught me bone is bone.
It bends, it breaks, it mends anew,
And so, my thinking shifted too.

There were paths I carved with fervent feet,
Mistaking hunger for the heat.
I danced with shadows, dressed in pride,
I kissed ideals I now let slide.
Not out of shame, nor some disguise,
But from the way that wisdom sighs.

No, I wear no doubled face,
No costume stitched with sly disgrace.
I do not play at saint or sin,
But simply shed my older skin.
The soul, like sea, must ebb and swell,
What once was right may not still dwell.

Growth is not betrayal’s twin,
It is the echoing voice within.
That softens stone and clears the dust,
That asks, “What now deserves your trust?”
And so I rise, unchained from past,
Not fixed in marble, but made to last.

Judge me not by yesteryear,
But by the will that brought me here.
I bloom, I stumble, I redefine,
Each version still a thread of mine.
For even stars must shift their place,
And find new fire in endless space.

So let me change, and let it be,
A hymn to our humanity.
Not proof I’ve lost my truest hue,
But proof I’ve lived, and listened, too.

I’m not always the most creative,
But I’ve always been a little naive,
Choosing easier routes to healing,
Ones that kept me feeling unseen.

But I think I’m done with hiding now,
Done accepting life’s just pain,
So I’ll start drafting love from everything mundane,
Romanticizing quiet mornings and loud summer rain.

I’ll find poetry in coffee steam,
In the way the trees sway and sigh,
In cracked sidewalks blooming weeds,
And cotton candied evening skies.

Maybe, just maybe,
If I love each gentle, ordinary thing again,
I’ll find the pieces of myself I thought I’d lost,
And fall back in love with life,
Or at least treat it like a friend

She walks unlit between the crowd,
A hush beneath the voices loud.
The hours bruise her open hands,
Bartering breath for small demands.

No desk, no page, no teacher's name—
Just lessons scraped from soot and flame.
Her dreams, like threadbare hems, unwind—
Too delicate for those half-blind.

They do not see the shape she bears—
A rootless bloom that learns to care
For scraps of sky, for drifting sound,
For silence in a world unbound.

The mirror offers her no script,
No birthright carved, no title gripped.
Yet in her chest, a slow-burned spark—
A vow that glows beneath the dark.

Outside, the banyan dares to stay,
Its limbs a home for those astray.
She sees herself in trunk and leaf—
A quiet spine, a growing grief.

What voice is hers, if none reply?
What name survives when none ask why?
Still she persists, unknown, unseen—
A bloom that breaks through concrete green.