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!’

he lost his way, he knows not when.
chasing false idols he mistook for men.
he'd lose the child, if he only knew then -
he'd find a way to be a man again.

IHOB
IHOP

i washed and folded my dreams
            my threadbare memories
everything i had and i
carried them with me

it was all so much
            lighter than i remember
there was so much more

i was
wearing nothing
but my name
            i never needed anything else
it
            used to keep me
            so much warmer
than it does
now
i never knew how cold
            we are

i remember
looking down at my concave palms
            the ones i knew were mine and
            they opened so deep i could gaze
                        into the blazing eyes of galaxies
                                    –my galaxies–
            every star charted and named
                        nurtured and
                        loved
                               ­     so loved
now i
im not even sure my hands are mine
i know my eyes arent
            i know they
            cannot be so hollow

            they cannot be so hollow

when i went to unpack
every color drained into the ground
and
everything was
ashes

i
touched
my cheekbones and under
the faint shadows of my paper fingertips
my body crumbled
to

d
            u
                        s
          ­                          t

How I wish I were like a mountain;
strong, bold, tall.
What secrets would they contain?
How long till I fall?

How I wish I were like the sea;
calm, comforting, seamless.
It is beautiful and endless.
How I yearn for love, a desperate plea

How I wish I were like a thunderstorm;
fierce, powerful, brave,
vicious but certain.
It smothers me,
but it embraces you.
How I wish I were less torn

I look into the mirror,
but I can’t see me.

What do you see when you look at me?
Cause I see a little grain of sand lost in a sea.

This little grain of sand thats so small and tiny you can barely see it.
Floating in an infinite pool of blue,
being pushed by a faint current.

This grain of sand isnt like the rest,
its not laying at the bottom of a reef.
It has floated from shore to shore,
and has seen all sorts of fish.
Its floated in fresh water,
then in salt water.

But what if this faint current weakens,
and this grain of sand begins to sink deeper and deeper into the sea.
Where it begins to feel colder,
and then it becomes darker,
till the last ray of light begins to fade away.

This grain of sand is left floating in nothingness.
Feeling no current.
Seeing nothing but darkness.
Just sinking down to rock bottom.

So when I look at myself you know what I see?
I see a person that has potential.
A person that has been places and has seen things.
But a person that feels so small and insignificant that they think they dont mean much.

Just another grain of sand thats lost in a sea.