We scream in silence;
shout to the void
in a hope we’ll ever
be seen.

But no eyes lock when you are looking away
so all that stares back
is the dark.

The darkness of our fears.

I loved you in the hush between two sighs,
Where glances flickered, stars that lost their flame.
Your voice, though gentle, bore no soft replies,
No echo shaped itself around my name.

I offered verses, filaments of grace,
Fine bridges spun from breath and tethered fire,
But you, like frost that veils a summer's face,
Withheld the warmth my trembling hopes required.

You did not break me. No, you were too kind.
Yet kindness, cold, can cut like polished steel.
A smile, misplaced, can hollow out the mind;
And silence teaches wounds too deep to heal.

So I retreat. Not bitter, but erased—
A violin, unheld, in silence cased.
Still strung with song that none will understand,
Still turned toward you, an unanswered command.

I wish I could expell
This wild beast from my chest,
This bottomless well,
Merciless tempest.
.
It roars and screams
For things it can't get:
Insubstantial dreams,
Uncollected debt.
.
And it isn't fair
That efforts mean naught;
When all is laid bare -
Love can't be bought.
.
I long and I ache,
At the mercy of fate,
Its give and take,
The cruelest bait.
.
The suffocating need
To not be alone,
Unrelenting greed,
Scathing to the bone.
.
It rakes its claws deep
Through my ribcage,
Makes me weep,
Helpless with rage.
.
Its loathsome fury,
Feral with want,
My judge and jury,
Inescapable haunt.
.
And it makes me think
That it's you I'm missing,
But it's really that link,
That has me reminiscing.
.
And I tried with such ardor
To find it once more,
But it's getting harder,
And my soul is sore.
.
Tired of hoping
And letdowns, in vain,
Tired of coping
With this constant pain.
.
If I were not godless
Surely I would pray
To finally convalesce,
To just get away.
.

This user is loosing interest in everything
like tabs left open, forgotten, buffering.
Notifications blink like dying stars,
but none are worth the effort of looking.

Conversations feel like code
written in languages I unlearned.
but mean none of them.

Even the mirror loads too slowly,
and when it does,
the face looks like someone
mid-update,
stuck.

The days autoplay.
The nights glitch.
And somewhere in the background,
I hear the soft hum
of systems shutting down.

I should've counted the days
When you were here 
Now I count every second
That you're not here

Pick me up in my dream tonight,
Lead me home through quiet halls of light,
Where sorrow cannot follow,
Where echoes do not weep.

Welcome me beyond the veil,
Where gold bends beneath weary steps.
Let me rest beside You,
While below, my mother lingers,
A figure draped in mourning,
Hands trembling over a name
She will never call again.

I have left her with the ghosts of joy,
I have torn the sun from her sky,
With love spilled from open veins,
Drop by drop,
Like rain that never reaches the earth,
Like autumn leaves too heavy to dance,
The last breath of fading stars.

If only the dead could speak,
If only breath could slip through silence,
I would press my voice into the wind:
“Forgive me, mother.”
“I love you, always.”

Pick me up in my dream tonight.
For the war has quieted in my marrow,
And the sword I have carried, heavy with grief,
Lies rusted at my feet.

Let me fold into the roots of the Tree of Life,
Let the sun warm my hollow chest,
Let my lashes kiss the light one final time,
And as my breath unspools into nothing,
As my body bends to ash, to dust, to light,

I am home.

Even in death,
Tears will still trace the hollow curve of my cheek,
An eternal river, untouched by time or decay.

Even in death,
My blood, now but a memory,
Will have withered into silence.
My flesh, a crumbling relic,
Peels away from the marrow,
Each fragment of me scattered into the dust,
And still
Tears,
Will stain the remnants of what once was,
Slipping from eyes that no longer see,
Drifting into oblivion,
A haunting echo of all that was lost.

Even in death,
In the hollowed chambers of my chest,
Where nothing lives,
Where no heartbeat dares to sound,
Tears will continue to fall,
As if they, too, are cursed to never rest.

Everyday, without fail,
I'd find myself in this space,
At the end of the living room.
Just big enough for one of me
To lie sideways, and another me
To sit with his back to the railing,
And his feet right up against the doors.

I'd find myself taking a nap there,
On afternoons that render
My cozy bed and blanket suffocating,
And even if sleep kept itself
At an arm's length away,
The warmth of the sun at its height
Made me think less of how
It's not just sleep that put a distance
Between itself and me.

Every now and then,
I'd find myself curled up,
On the aging mattress lying there
On the floor, left behind by somebody.
Sometimes, I have my phone with me,
As I keep looking away from matters
That are right up in my face.

There are less fortunate days,
When my phone's a few feet away,
And the space between it and I
Is home to all my baggage
That's begun to rot and smell over the years.

Between the time I had my last meal,
And when the day has no more surprises to reveal,
I'd find myself propped up there.
Some nights, I'd sit and strum
An off-key guitar that's missing a string,
Taking breaks to light a cig or two.

It could be the nicotine, it could be my delusions,
But sometimes I feel I've become
Just a little better,
Though I know that's just my way
Of reminding oneself,
That things hopefully get better over time.

This little area has seen a fair bit
Of burnt butts and paper planes,
Of drunk delirium and sober concerns,
Of an abundance of persons,
And the lack of it all -
It's the balcony, it couldn't be
A space of my own, you know?

Even so, in the wee hours
Where insomnia flirts with dissociation,
When my 'everyone' exists but in person,
And I crave for a shoulder to rest on,
This place saves me.

Not quite in the heroic sense
Of culling dragons and scaling towers,
But, in a simpler twisted way,
Wrapping some vines around my ankles,
To keep me from seeing what's over the edge,
Yet letting me know, in it's own way,
That I'm probably not alone.