I cannot sit with this disgust
while you thrive in life.
I make the wrong choices—
you stay right.

What a sad game
we play.
I always enter the fight
with my eyes tied.

The sores on my body
leak with stolen glances,
moonlight nights.

My bones turn outward.
I crawl to God—
forgive me once.
I beg
for the hundredth time.

Agony owns my heart.
It’s stuck in the yesterdays
where you and I
rot.

They are placeholder men.
I wait for you.
You’re just an hour away—
why don’t we cross paths?

They are placeholder men.
You own my mind,
my yesterdays,
my tomorrows—
and my now
is you.

They are placeholder men.
I don’t want to hurt them,
but my bones are cold,
my hair is grey,
my body greedy.

They are placeholder men.
When I close my eyes,
it’s your name that appears.

It’s too late now.

Let’s call it a night.

there are days like today
when the void in my head doesn’t consume me,
when the darkness where i am doesn’t suffocate me.

it’s just there,
hovering like a quiet shadow,
pressing its weight against my back.

and there i was,
feeling its draining comfort
as though it knew i’d fought enough battles
for one day, as though it had come to keep me company.

and there i was,
letting its presence envelope me
until it was gone—
until all that was left
was my drained, bled-out body
and my mind split open,
leaking out its deafening silence.

and there i was,
sighing out all the heaviness in my chest
as though it were the last,
the only thing left to do
before everything finally ended.

Three minutes of song
flooded my brain
with images of that night.

It felt like I was there again—
you,
me,
and a deflated mattress.

The window rattling in the rain
as we whispered
our darkest truths.

It’s night now, baby.

Do I still make you stare—
stare into the sky
the way we once did?

Or do I melt
like a snowman in the sun,
leaving a puddle
for you to run through—
laughing,
barefoot,
untouched.

Just three minutes.
I’ll be sure to skip it next time.

But for now,
you can consume me.

As sand trickles between my fingers,
Still I continue to search its meaning.
The meaning of love that is,
Of millions of grains, of countless truths
Only a handful can be held;
The rest slipped away, untouched.

Love, an figment ever changing—
Untamed, unfixed, unpinned, undefined.
When I place a phrase on my tongue
It escapes like a breath on a cold morning:
Visible for a moment, vanishes after.

And though I may never grasp it,
Still I blindly follow where it leads.
For love, even as a figment,
Is a journey worth the wandering.

when my love pours beyond
the rim of the glass,
i won’t cry over spilt milk.

what is longing if not a drop,
pressed at once with cloth in vain.

let it run down the table’s edge,
a river of devotion.

and if it stains the wood, so be it
for what is love
if it leaves no mark?

let it rest in the grain,
a memory not meant to vanish
but to remind me, i once overflowed.


n.h.