I’m sorry for the times I silenced my voice,
Swallowing words to keep the peace.
For dimming my light to soften the shadows,
And calling it compromise.

I’m sorry for doubting my worth,
For the moments I let self-blame consume me.
For believing I wasn’t enough,
And letting pain define who I was.

I’m sorry for hiding parts of me,
Thinking they were too much to share.
For shrinking,
Thinking smallness would keep me safe.

I’m sorry for believing love meant endurance,
That devotion was measured in sacrifice.
For holding myself to an unyielding fire,
Just to prove I could stand the heat.

But today, I see it now—
Strength is not the absence of breaking.
It’s the courage to gather the pieces
And build something whole.

Today, I apologize to the mirror.
Not for the tears I shed,
But for the years I spent believing
I was too much or never enough.

Today, I give myself permission
To stand tall,
To embrace the parts of me I tried to hide.
I forgive myself.
And in that forgiveness,
I find the freedom to begin.

Today, I choose to love myself
Without apology.

The cold has a memory —
it lingers in the corners of empty rooms,
settles into the spaces you once filled.

No matter how many layers I wear,
it finds a way to my skin,
a whisper of what used to be warmth.

The windows rattle,
the floor sighs under footsteps that aren’t yours,
and I tell myself it’s just the season.

But the truth is,
it’s not the winter that chills me —
it’s the memory of you.

There are days when the past
hits me like an uninvited guest,
its presence sharp, unwelcome.
Memories once soft and warm
now turn into needles,
pricking at the places I thought were healed.

I remember laughter that filled the air,
and the way we used to talk like time had no hold on us.
But now those moments feel foreign,
like ghosts drifting in a forgotten room.

The sting of a kiss that meant everything
now lingers like a wound that refuses to close.

I wish I could erase it all,
but even the hurt holds pieces of us
that I’m not ready to let go of.

The silence between us is deafening —
A chasm carved by all we left unsaid.
Each word we swallowed lingers,
A ghost that haunts the empty space.

I hear your absence in the quiet.
The stillness hums with what was once ours —
Laughter tangled in whispered promises,
Love unspoken but deeply known.

But now, I only hear the questions.
Do you miss the way my voice
Filled the silence like sunlight?
Do your thoughts wander back to me
When the night grows too long?

I reach for words that might mend,
But none can bridge the distance.
So I sit with the silence,
And try to understand
what it’s telling me.

They discovered it and were trying to get to the bottom of it.
They had not encountered anything like this before, but they knew the effects of it.
Lying in the bed, waiting for his death, he looks as pale as a full moon night.
The aura of pain emitting from him is as gloomy as the new moon night.
They tried to cheer him up, guiding him to get out of pain, but all of them knew only he had to go through it alone.
That is the nature of the sickness that found him, which is called by the name 'love.'
There is no medicine for it except her redemption of the love given by him.

The wheel spins, the bets are laid,
A game of hearts, a love parade.
They place their chips on numbers bright,
The ones with charm, the ones with might.

The ball of fate will roll and land,
On winning hands, the ones they planned.
No wager placed on broken dreams,
No hope for those with lesser means.

Their eyes chase red, their hearts want black,
But never green, no turning back.
A riskless game, they play so tight,
They only love what shines in light.

Yet here I stand, a number cold,
Unmarked, unplayed, a story old.
A silent slot, a wasted spin,
No luck, no love—how could I win?

The burden’s mine, this truth I bear,
That fate won’t stop, it doesn’t care.
The ball will rest where wishes gleam,
Not where the nameless dare to dream.

I’ve waited so long to talk to you.
I’ve messaged you and have waited
to hear back from you.
I am still waiting.
At this point, time isn’t a factor.
Even if I never hear anything,
I still will wait.

The closest I get to you now
is an algorithm.
Social media suggests you
as a new friend.
As much as I would love that—
to start over and pretend,
as painful as it sounds,
to love you in restriction,
trapped by some border,
like we’re strangers.

I stare at your picture and never
swipe the notification away.
In a way, it feels like old times.
The only thing missing is your voice.
You’re with me when I go to work,
you’re with me when I am in the car.
But nothing lasts forever.
By the time I wake up,
the notification is gone,
the screen is empty,
and you’re gone.

But your eyes—
the way that you smile—
have not left my memory.

I suppose I should be satisfied
with what I have now.
I’ve tried,
but I am not

In the silence where you once breathed, I wait,
As shadows of you haunt every quiet place.
The sun, it rises, but feels too late,
And my heart, like a shattered glass, loses grace.

The threads of laughter we spun with care
Now unravel into tears, slow and raw.
Your whispered promises linger in the air,
But they crumble like leaves in autumn's maw.

How can I hold you in memories alone,
When each thought of you is a knife, a thorn?
In the ruins of us, I stand alone,
A broken soul, a heart worn and torn.

If I could keep you, just one last embrace,
Maybe this sorrow would dare to part.
But now all I have is this hollow space,
Where you once lived—deep in my heart.

Breathing in your smoke is like heaven to me,
Clearing out my lungs of such anxiety.
Your crutch and your dependence,
An endearing call of resplendence,
I think I loved you.

You make me nervous.
To the point where my brain stops,
And my mouth keeps running
Without any indication of where
the finish line is.
Where I begin to speak too fast and too quick
To know what I’ve said, and quite possibly
For you to even follow each word that
Pours out.

Yet Your heart was longing for another,
You and I were not meant to be lovers,
And We were not made for each other.
Oh, how sad times swept away the positive possibilities and the “what if?” worries,
I thought I could only hate the month of August,
It seems I now despise of July.

Stress melted away within my tears as I wept,
Sadness left the residue of itself on my pillow where I slept.
The sun bleeding through my curtains closed,
And yet my room turns an ill ridden shade of yellow.

I thought the outcome would leave me with a feeling of euphoria
Instead I look to my mirrored self, reflecting a state of body dysmorphia

I do not like the way that I look,
Comparing myself to her and your feelings I mistook.
Straighter teeth and an older complexion,
While I hide away, she only craves the attention.
You only knew her for a day and you still went away,
With her on holiday to a place so far, I can’t stay
In this state of mind any longer.

Seeing her be the lighter to your cigarette;
The founding letters to the jumbled spaces in your alphabet.
I see I am only the ash that falls to the ground,
I am not within those letters which you finally found.

I remember when I wasn't so cold as ice.
Emotionally I was more open to the possibility of vulnerability.
But then you came along and changed me
Before I was so open.
Now only a shadow of my former self
My eyes that shined with  ember and hope
Now are dull and tired
The love that I had felt for you
Once
Now is crumbled up like a piece of paper
Fire, passion and intensity  
are gone just like the autumn leaves in the fall
Wondering where to go from here