I feel guilty,
And I think it's all my fault.
I feel guilty,
For being too much
but still not enough.
I feel guilty,
I swear
I didn’t mean to mess this up too.
I feel guilty,
Because it seems like
my presence just makes things worse.

I feel guilty,
And now I rot because I must.

The flowers died on monday
They had been wilting for a while 
I had been staring at them
They reminded me of the love we had
Beautiful yet tragic
Romantic yet ghastly

And i know it could have been worse
That we could have made it work
But it wasn't my **** show alone
Couldn't make it work since you were gone.

Artistic yet fragile like a card pyramid 
Fallen to base by wind's blow
But we could have built it back up
We could have made it work 
But the afterglow wasn't enough.

The silence echoes, deep and wide,
Where once your presence used to hide.
A shadow now, where love never lived,
A hollow place, no warmth to give.

In every room, your absence cries,
A thousand questions fill my mind.
Why did you leave? Why can't you stay?
I waited for you, but you’ve turned away.

Your absence leaves a mark so deep,
A longing that I cannot keep.

I truly hope it all washes away
The guilt, complacency and your fears
That like the flood, it cleanses it all
You start anew, forget what you knew
Sleep without worry, dream and never fret
It'll all wash away, be free of your chains

I don’t have to change the names,
hide beneath hyperbole and metaphor,
or remove details to protect our guilt.

Neither one of us is blameless;
we both created a storm that left behind lifetimes of wreckage.

And I dare not pretend this is in honor
of the beauty we were in the beginning.

No—

this is an ode to a tragedy that will always be:
the you and me that we became.

In frigid shadows of a broken vow,
My heart, a prisoner, in silence cries.
Forced to yield, unseen chains bind me now,
Where love's cold absence breeds a storm that sighs.

She walks unburdened, draped in self-made light,
A queen unstained by tears my spirit weeps.
My yearnings mocked, a one-sided plight,
Betrayal's embers where true passion sleeps.

A barren wasteland, where our dreams lay slain,
Hope's fragile bud choked by a loveless rain.
My silent screams unheard, a whispered pain,
Lost in the darkness, love's deceptive chain.

Isolation's grip, a serpent's cold embrace,
Tightens around me, fueled by her cold grace.
I reach out, grasping for a fleeting trace,
Of the love we once shared, now displaced.

Invisible chains bind me to the past,
Memories haunt me, can't escape at last.
Like a ghost, I wander lost, outcast,
Trapped in a love that couldn't ever last.

Each link in the chain is a bitter regret,
Moments lost forever, I can't forget.
I'm shackled to a love I can't reset,
Tangled in a web of love and debt.

The weight of the chains bears down on my soul,
A heavy burden I can't control.
I long to break free, to finally be whole,
But the chains hold tight, taking their toll.

Unseen chains, invisible but strong,
Bind me to a love that's gone so wrong.
I'm trapped in a cycle, where I don't belong,
A prisoner of love's haunting song.

I search for a key to unlock the chains,
To free myself from these loveless pains.
But the chains remain, a reminder of stains,
Of a love lost in sorrowful refrains.

I long for freedom, for release from this plight,
To soar like a bird in the clear, free light.
To break these chains that bind me so tight,
And finally find peace in the still of night.

But until that day comes, I'll endure the pain,
Of living with these unseen chains.
Bound to a love that's left me drained,
Haunted by memories that still remain.

Unseen chains, a burden unseen,
A weight that crushes all my dreams.
But I'll keep on fighting, despite how it seems,
For one day, I'll break free from these loveless schemes.

The fish are frozen in their mirror.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to.
I dreamed them into the world.

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.