I have friends.
That’s what I tell myself when I sit with them,
pretending to belong.
But they don’t see me.
Not really.

To them, I’m the quiet one,
The innocent one,
The dumb one.
The child playing at adulthood,
Too naive to understand the world they walk.
They think I don’t notice how they talk down to me,
The way they smile when I speak of my dreams.
Like I’m too soft to notice
the sharpness of their words.

But I am not a child,
And I am not innocent.
I am a girl who learned
How to smile through the ache,
How to laugh through the hollow,
How to pretend that I don’t feel the walls closing in.

They think I’m easy to fool,
That I won’t catch the way they roll their eyes
When I speak of the things I love.
The toys that make me smile,
The lines of  books that cling to my soul,
The songs I bury myself in &
the piano and violin melodies
that feel like home in a world too loud.
All dismissed, waved off, ridiculed,
Labeled childish, unworthy of their time.
Like my joy is an inconvenience to their lives.

But I notice.
I notice everything.
I notice how they’ve built me in their minds—
A fragile thing,
easy to break, easy to ignore.
They have no idea what it’s like to be me.

They don’t know how my hands shake
When I hold back tears in front of them.
They don’t know how many words I swallow
Just to keep the peace,
How many pieces of myself I’ve hidden
To make them more comfortable.

They laugh at me.
Not with me.
They think I don’t see it,
That I don’t feel it—
The subtle cruelty hidden in their jokes,
The way they twist my softness into stupidity.

I am but a pitiful inclusion
of their conversations.
A mere placeholder in their group.
A shadow they barely notice
Until they need to feel smarter, stronger, better.

And I let them.
Because it’s easier to stay quiet,
To let them believe they’re right,
Than to fight against the weight of their indifference.

In the end, I shrink.
I fold myself into something smaller,
Something quieter,
Until I am nothing more than the version they created—
A shadow of myself,
Easy to laugh at, easy to control.

But inside, I’m screaming.
Inside, I’m crying.
Because I don’t know how to explain
What it feels like to be surrounded
And still feel like the loneliest person in the room.

They think they know me.
But how could they?
They’ve never looked past the smile I force,
Never wondered why my hands tremble,
Why my breath falters,
Why my voice sometimes dies in my throat.

I am surrounded by people,
But I am alone in a way I can’t explain.
Alone in the crowd,
Alone in their presence,
Alone in the silence I hide behind.

I sit there, smiling, nodding,
surrounded by their voices,
Their laughter, their noise.
And yet I am alone.
Because they will never understand
the weight I carry,
the weight of a heart that beats in isolation.

I pretend like I don’t care
When they say I’m childish,
That my love for vanilla makes me small.
But inside, I am clawing at my own skin,
Begging for someone to see me—
Not the version of me they created,
But the real me.

Everyone likes vanilla.
I like it a bit more.
But they don’t get it, do they?
How something so simple
can mean everything when you feel so ******* lost.
They mock me for it—
Like it’s some childish obsession,
Like it’s a flaw that I’m drawn to the soft,
The pure,
The things that make me feel whole
In a world that’s always trying to tear me apart.

They look at my quiet smile, my careful hands,
And slap a label on my skin: innocent.
Like I’m some sticker they can peel off,
Stick wherever they please
and forget.

But I am not what they think I am.
I am not a word whispered behind cupped hands,
Not the soft thing they’ve mistaken for weak

I love stickers.
Bright, bold, beautiful things
That I press into notebooks and corners of my world,
Little pieces of colour in the chaos I can’t control.
But I am not a sticker.
I am not something they can pin down,
Label me whatever they ******* want to.
I am what I am,
It is what it is,
so deal with it or leave.

If the consequence of me being me
is loneliness,
then so be it.

I am many things,
But I am not their innocent doll.
I am not a joke,
I am not their fool.
I am not just a sticker.
I am not just their label.
I am a mosaic of cracks and scars,
and one day, I will tear these labels from my skin
and show them the strength they never saw.
Who knows,
maybe they might finally realise,
why hurricanes are named after people.

Too bad they’ll never take the time
to know that.
They’re too busy talking over me,
too busy writing their own stories
on the pages of my silence.

I don’t need their pity.
I don’t need their approval.
But God, sometimes I wish
just one of them would stop
and look at me long enough
to see the storm I carry,
to hear the screams I choke back every day.

Because I am tired of being invisible.
Tired of being their afterthought.
Tired of being underestimated,
of being seen but never known.
I am tired of sitting among friends
and still feeling utterly, completely,
Alone.

And I inevitably find myself wondering —
Will anyone ever know this loneliness?
Will anyone ever stop long enough
to see the girl who hides behind this smile?
Or am I doomed to disappear,
lost in a crowd that never bothered to look closer?

just like that the pretty girl in my dreams
disappeared freed my sheets to let them
suffocate as usual and i stayed there
facing the ceiling with cymbals’ collisions under my pillow

and for a haze i stayed
still and subsisting on spit and spider mites
like the sea wasn’t swallowing anything
till i was ninety percent salt and crystallized
breathing out dusty alphabet soup into the aether

like anyone with a disdain for capital letters
my circle sends its love along with mutual virtue parasitism
in distress beacons pinged through a dead battery and twitching fingers
and you know it’s for the best

no falling out of bed or breakfasts till the oasis is complete
under construction in the dusty pillowcase i call home
down the street from the abandoned asylum where i learned
mouth too dry and lungs too sharp

a shriveled cactus with paper spines

You have always retreated into the depths,  
Into places where I cannot follow.  
Sleek and serpentine, like a thread of liquid silver,  
You vanish, leaving only the faintest trace.  

Every afternoon, I shed teardrops,  
Each one sending ripples across the still water.  
Do sound waves reach you,
Can you hear me when I ask you to stay?

Your world is an ecosystem foreign to mine.
I can only dip my hand in the water
But you never coil your sinuous body in my grasp
You only ever kiss the surface, and bid another goodbye.  

"Nothing meant to be in your life requires a tight grip."

I always reach for your tail,  
But your body was made to slip away
Unwillingly, you linger
Unwillingly, I grip harder

I will always remember you as a fleeting presence.  
You will always remember me as the one who does not know contentment.

I wish I had a family,
a wife and two little ones
But I was born to be desolate
Unable to count up the sums.

I wish I paid attention
to the lessons at my school,
but the attacks of attrition
only made me the class fool

I wish I knew how to live,
and surface up to breathe
but the sharks keep gnawing
away at my paddling feet.

I wish I could run to you,
and find comfort in your arms
but I made a deal with the devil
and my voice has now been disarmed.

Addiction binds us fast in heavy chains,
A shadowed weight that lingers in our veins.
They call it substance trapped within our use,
Yet sorrow strikes, a deeper, darker bruise.

Sadness unfolds in fog’s relentless gray,
Its smudging hands erase the light of day.
Cold iron wraps the heart in steady grip,
As stories fracture, fragment, and then slip.

The shadows feast on what remains of light,
And nighttime robs the soul’s remaining fight.
Our cries dissolve like whispers in the breeze,
Where hope lies bound by sorrow’s cruel decrees.

Each breath grows thin, despair now lines the air,
A shroud of anguish drapes the world laid bare.
The spiral pulls us deeper with its trace,
It carves its scars on every grieving face.

The tides of hopelessness begin their rise,
To drown the stars that once adorned the skies.
Each thought becomes a plea for what once was,
A cycle spins and ends without a cause.

Despair’s soft hands grow tighter as they clasp,
A shifting sand that’s slipping from our grasp.
Inside this pit, the shadows find their mark,
They craft betrayal hidden in the dark.

We flee the taste of fear’s relentless sting,
Yet whispers draw us back with what they bring.
Eyes hollow out beneath their whispered breath,
And face the hollow promise born of death.

The mist of validation fades from sight,
Perfection dances far beyond the night.
Tonight our tears run heavy down the well,
Where silence grows and deeper shadows dwell.

The future spreads before an endless void,
A dream undone, a shattered hope destroyed.
Each breath we draw feels like the final strain,
A fleeting gasp of life that ends in pain.

We drink the brew that sorrow serves each day,
And hunger for the dark to light our way.
The mirror shows a soul in fractured glass,
A thousand wounds that time cannot surpass.

At last, the void becomes our quiet nest,
Its darkness soothes us into hollow rest.
We dance in shadows, numbing fleeting time,
In sorrow’s arms, we find this endless rhyme.

And when the dark consumes us, soul and all,
The final breath becomes the last to fall.
A whisper rises, soft: “You’re meant for me,”
As loss transforms into eternity.

Whispers in the Cold

In the quiet of winter's longest nights,
    Where shadows bend a pale moonlight.

A heart encased in cold, white snow,
    It yearns for warmth, yet still unknown.

Loneliness, a bitter friend, in silence,
    It whispers without end.

Yet through the frost, a spark ignites,
    Hope dances softly into this night.

Each flake that falls, a tear once shed,
    Words of hope once left unsaid.

Though in the stillness, dreams will grow,
    From barren earth, new life will show.

Just search within, you'll see His light,
    To guide you through the dark of night.

💡LightInDarkness 🌑 ©JFO👥2025

पूछ रहा हूँ लोगों से हाल, आजकल,
सबका अपना दुःख है,
बंद हो गया है चार दीवारी में,
तौलते हैं आज़ादी, दौलत के तराज़ू पर,
फिर कहते हैं, 'वक़्त नहीं है आजकल'.

I am lost in the dark
The cold absence of light
Drifting through the space of my mind
Deaf, Dumb, and Blind

My heart lies dormant
The rhythm silent
The spark gone
Cracked, Cold, and Shattered

The stone in my chest
The weight of this soul particle
With the density of a collapsing star
Crushing, Smothering, and Dying

Silence in the dark,
Deafening,
I scream to be heard,
Unseen, Unknown, and Unwanted.

No sunrise, only darkness
The light once so bright in my life,
Extinguished.
Colors are only a memory, as the grey fades to black.

The memories start to erode,
Colors of despair,
Blue, Indigo, Midnight, Space
At my end, I see only the Hues of Blue

Life’s like an old rose garden,
once blooming,
now withering.

Petals falling,
replaced by dry leaves,
wrapped in silence,
once so rare,
now so heavy.

I return home,
laughter ringing in ears.

But as the door shuts,
loneliness greets me,
like a cold, hazy mist,
or dark clouds that the stars resist.