Pictures of my present— but none of them smile back.
Just me, talking to the man in the mirror,
    his eyes tired,
          his silence loud.
He stands in the frame, wrapped in skins made of fear—
To stand tall beneath the titles they gave him;
layered, worn,
  worn down.

To call it strength when you pretend to be more than you are.
But no one asks what it costs to keep holding up the
image they’ve
        painted of you.
I want to stop performing, but giving up feels like giving in
to everything they already believe about me, there's never an
account for the fallen man—
        only fingers pointed,
  as they count him out like a statistic.

I think about a demise so often it no longer shocks me.
It just waits—patiently— like something I’ve already
   shaken hands with,
    gripped by time pressing on me.
Sometimes I feel like I’m boiling alive, my chest
cracking open with a salty crunch, like a crab
   in a sealed ***—
    no escape, just steam and pressure.

A slow, bitter truth: no one’s turning the heat down.
And all I can say is—
   “Crap.”
     Not funny. Not light.
Just the word that stumbles out when your soul folds
in on itself and even pain doesn’t know
how to explain itself anymore.

Contemporary madness -
Craving more - with no subtraction
    "In game?" - involve
    Participation - of the thought  
    Most mimic those who disconnected
    Most play as virgins - unaware
    Not daring to examine bearings
        Of social roles and biological demandings
        Of what is "Me" - not a direction - *****
        It teaches taking human role
        Humane is engineers laughter
        "It's sickening to see you choose an owe
        When you repeat same neural patterns"
        You peak plateau - a weary and indifferent
            Flaw - begs you to quit the brawl
            Unless you choose as part of the absurd
            A conscious action of self-talk
            With none of "I" from egoistic brothel
                At last to see the stupid joke
                With it they made a 'wear'
                Augustly awful is its fate
                So desperate to be the wearer

I’m a flower with drooping ears
Uranium is the best snack for me

  I water myself ever night to make sure I stay ripe
  I heard the thunder scream “not again.”
  A bird watched me implode politely.
  Bees avoid me like taxes.
Sometimes I sit in the sink
Talking to dishes I refuse to wash.
I once tried to talk to a lightbulb,
It turned on, then went blind.

BAM!
  BAM!
    BAM!
      BAM!
 ­       BAM!

Caught.
Chainsawed the product.
No one asked what the product was.
They just clapped.

  BRAVO!

I wore a barcode of my favourite cereal as a scarf,
Told the cashier:
  “Scan me, I bruise easily.”
He called security.

My reflection told me:
  “You blink too much for a cyllinder.”
And I agreed.
Then blinked four times, fast.
  (That was the code for “leave me broken into thirds and believable halves.”)

I’m a memory someone scribbled over.
I’m the museum you build around your hostel.
I’m a vending machine that sells only change
And money is required for usage.

The floor tried to arrest me.
The ceiling held a grudge against me.
The windows applied for workers’ comp.
  And
  I told the walls I loved them.

They said:
  “You only say that when you’re hurting.”
My response:
  “Calamari doesn’t scream, and neither do I.”

I’ve got diamond eyes, but don’t see myself so clear,
All the excited boys make the most noise,
Yet depression only needs to whisper in an ear.

Words are prison bars; speaking highly of yourself
the danger of being handed a lengthy sentence–
Booked in the library of time; days sitting on a shelf.

… waiting to be read

Let me stay shelved a little longer— reading up,
leading up, dreaming of a story still becoming
Between the lines; silent – even good stories gather dust
These tales of triumph still tarnish and rust…

Don't judge by how loud or how fast it all looks—
even the best stories get forgotten in books…
misunderstood!

i see a mass standing in front of the mirror—
a human, perhaps.
i can't call her a girl.
she doesn't have the attributes—
enough to be called all that.

it's a reflection,
undeterred,
simply wretched.

there are marks on the mirror—
proof it hasn't been cleaned.
i wonder if they're on my body too.
i hope the glass has enough cracks
to hide and tell
how it feels every time
i discover the same wrecked look
staring back.

the skin is loose
around a few different hooks,
feels like it's sagging—
i pull so hard,
hoping i'll tear through.

i feel nothing but pain
for her,
hidden beneath all that disgust—
the turmoil i'll put her in,
the self-hatred.

and to think—
she’s just become
a black mass
of everything and nothing.

a loathsome, foolish little being
that can’t fit,
can’t talk,
can’t sit.

she’s not the ideal.
and sometimes i think
her existence
isn’t for the world even—

she’s just a scandal.

Take the time—don’t just spend it— to watch your grind,
These dreams are brewed, steeped behind these caffeine eyes.
Still, as the sunrise scripts its golden lines, my gaze still delays
Having to put on a daily mask; trapped in yesterday’s disguise.
All of these borrowed hours lace my breath, thinned and worn,
All these seconds spent on second-guessing myself; I’m torn—
Barely paying attention to obvious life lessons due in reflection;
Skipping those lessons, now I pay with life's collection.

As for facing my many regrets, it proves facing the glass—
But not all mirrors can clearly cut clean through the past.
Truths are warped, wrapped for the present, for who peer—
Peering in, fragile as much, cracked, and smeared with fear.
We search within ourselves, as all seekers must willingly do,
Searching for a love clear as glass — one that is sharp, and true.
As peach blossoms fall, and small stones roll, know: that through
The times of picking yourself up, some dust gets stuck on you.

The world isn’t so clear, especially if man’s clarity is uninvolved;
Profiting from all our scars – given titles hanging over ourselves
So many times, that prophets need to remind us of who we are
Profits, or prophets, but it all depends on who’s worth you trust.

I left my phone in the fridge again.
Texted my dead friend by mistake.
The dream said turn left at the red door
but every door was mauve and melting.
I wore the wrong shoes
to the right breakdown.

God, I’m tired of being
the lesson in someone else’s flashback.
Of saying 'I’m fine'
like it’s a good thing.

Sometimes I bite a fingernail off
and flick it to the ground,
just to prove I was here,
just to pretend my DNA
is not a walking lie.

Sometimes I talk
to the dogs with TikTok accounts
like they’re holding something back.

Sometimes I rehearse my disappearances
in liminal spaces:
parking garages,
abandoned malls,
group chats I left on read.
Now I RSVP to nothing
and they still say
“you’ll be missed.”

I keep meaning to heal,
but the plot keeps thickening—
And my name—
God, my name—
it echoes like a spoiler
in a house that isn’t mine anymore.
A trivia fact
no one got right.

My memories keep getting
auto-corrected to get over it.
I don’t.
I alphabetize the wreckage.
I romanticize the ruin.
The rot is getting readable.

Anyway,
I’m late again.
Time got weird in the hallway.
I swear the mirror
was trying to warn me—
but I was too busy
checking if my under-eye bags
made me look exquisitely exhausted,
or just ordinary and old.

I wanted to scream  
but the hallway  
was practicing silence.  

I wanted to run,  
but the rug said stay  
and the mirror said  
be still  
and beautiful and
unavailable.

The mirror said:
this is what longing looks like
when it runs out of places to go.

So I stood there—
a half-wreck, half-reflection—
trying to decide
if disappearing quietly
still counts as survival.

Somewhere,
my phone is defrosting.
Somewhere,
the red door is waiting.

Somewhere,
my dead friend
is laughing
his ghost-laugh,
mouthing: same.

What am I
Under my clothes?

My bones, my skin,
Under a tapestry of deceit.

To Jesus I was taught to bow,
But alas, my garments lie.

Who am I
Under my clothes

What will my soul define,
When my clothes give away the false.

Perhaps I need the right clothes,
And a change might restore what’s lost.

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.

every day, he looked out the window,
his inhibitions toppling over like dominos;
he gawked at the blackbirds, all the same:
he could not tell a friend from a foe.

he never thought he’d go so far -
as to slay ‘the raven’ with a crooked crowbar;
his conscience dripped with sins, and rose -
a thorny heap of fallacies, charred.

he blamed the world for all he was;
convinced in his soul that he had a good cause:
it wasn’t enough to redeem his faux pas, so -
he bore the tag of an ill-fated outlaw.

of all the names, by which he was called,
who knew - one day - he’d cease to show up?
a child dead of his innocence, who
never learned how to -
as they say -

‘grow up!’