I’ve seen too much, held behind these eye lids.
I've learned that the dark is no place I can rest.
It shows me everything that hides in its corners.
With Every stubborn pulse beating in my Worn-out chest.

With Every stubborn pulse beating in my Worn-out chest.
I flinch at kindness like it's gonna turn around and bite.
Because most smiles that I've seen were a mask that betrayed.
I keep my room much brighter when its night—

My body is here, I think. Maybe in part.
But the rest is somewhere else I left. unclaimed.
I built shrines of silence inside my own heart,
Where I hid my crying echo, and gave it, its own name.

When someone asks me why I never go to sleep,
A version of me steps in front of me to lie.
Cause sleep is a place that's just way too deep,
For someone who truly feels like they have already died.


Someone is always moving underneath my pale skin—
I'm nothing but an actor mouthing someone's borrowed truth.
I close up and I break as the thoughts are swarming in.
And I choke on even the quietest taste of their proof.

I stay wide awake thinking pain is gonna pass.
But it doesn't. It stays here and lives in my bed.
My comfort is a broken window of shattered glass—
But it never makes me try to fix my ever-shattered head.

I taught myself how to speak from underneath pauses,
And how not to feel, with my own blood and meds.
You say that love exists? Then show me where the clause is,
Saying “nothing that will live will be punished when it's dead.”

I almost opened up my heart once. And it burned.
Not with fire, just with that light I knew I shouldn’t touch.
You say we're worth trust? Let's see if it returns,
If you abandon it like faith and leave it cold and untouched.

I wish I knew how not to leave my own trail.
But my presence cuts the air, and I know I can't pretend.
I stitch it back together, each time that I inhale,
My own conscious effort just to draw my next breath.

These eyes must stay open. And That’s the only rule.
So, I'm counting every crack in the wall and in the door.
My heartbeats break open. My blood is in a pool.
Not so much now, but that used to mean more.

Might as well nail the door, I know I'll never unseal.
Or the self in the mirror would start turning away.
Cause to truly open up, would just make it too real.
And nothing real has ever entered my life to stay.

So never again, will I close tired my eyes.
You can Keep your strong skin. I will keep the scars.
I keep swallowing locks, in my chest they reside.
And never again, will I open my heart.

A quiet
young woman
in a library
reading books
with diagrams
of bomb shelters
and *** positions

She's thinking
of her future

The academic prepares
he reads and writes
and makes his head spin all around

pages and sheets
full of texts

broken down
so even
a squirrel could understand.

He memorises and repeats
his family thinks:
"He's caught some disease!"

But alas,
The day of reckoning is here
let's see how our academic fears

he walks into the room
with his teacher following soon

They sit and talk
not even noticing
the exam has begun

hours spent
of repeating texts and scribes
But "Oh whoops this one's wrong!"

The teacher sighs and groans
telling him to study some more

The academic sits there stunned
"Maybe Philosophy is my call."

She had a well-oiled mind.
A kind of thinking that kept a rhythm,
even in chaos.
That kept tapping the well of knowledge until it found what it sought.
That kept time with life,
while feeding the spiritual.
With one foot in the proverbial language of the world,
and one foot in the meadow.
Quick but careful.
She took her time,
in a world where anything tedious was shunned.

-Rhia Clay