I feel
nothing now.

But once—
the sun was fire,
the water cool.

Once…
I heard the wind.
I felt a feather.
I swam.

Once, I fell in love.

But now just this drifting,
this drifting,
away.

I do not mourn.
I take what comes—
feather, plastic,
skin.

I wrap them in salt —
and silence

The man did not ask
but he drifts now
with the others—

The fish, the feathers, the gods.

At the water's edge,
a discarded candy wrapper—
kiting upwards—flitting, flittering,
rising, rising,
falling, falling—
before dancing with the waves.

Waves lap their lullaby
along the shore,
then slip
back to the sea.
The shoreline breathing
with each wave's retreat,
this slow pulse
of land and sea.

In the distance
an orange sun melts—bleeding fire
into a waiting blue.
Minnows skip through the shallows—
sun and shade silvering the fish
in flashes.

A heron calls once.
Then silence,
as a lighthouse's white pulse
traces the rocky shore.

The candy wrapper brushes
against a figure,
a shape,
a shadow,
before floating away.

The figure turning—slowly, barely—
cradled in the rhythm of waves.
Gently pulled by the current,
softly pushed by the wind.

A seagull's feather falls—on pale skin.
Resting a moment.
Before cool water
washes it away.

Everything drifts…
bobbing,
bobbing,
slowly,
slowly,
out to the ocean.

And so it drifts—
this body,
this drowned man,
traveling slowly
to his new home.

A child sleeps in neon static
his ribs spell passwords no one reads.
Coins blink on screens, not in palms.
A mother trades her breath for bandwidth.

They stitch worth in barcode veins,
souls archived in debt.

Yet
in the ruin’s hum,
a hand still reaches
not to take,
but to hold.

Pulse as tether.
Mind, a blade dulled on bone.
Ash drips from the ceiling of thought
no light, only the hiss of burned names.

Tongues calcify in jars of dusk.
Flesh remembers what silence forgot.
Smoke blooms in the mouth of sleep.
Pain suckles the root,
wants nothing but to stay.

Grief is a handless clock
still turning.
Still carving
where nothing remains soft.

I heed no mortal woes or pleas,
Yet share the planet’s silent pain.
Volcanoes spew their molten seas,
But still, men fail to comprehend.

They cannot grasp the full expanse
Of truths concealed in fated days—
They take our doom as cruel mischance,
Yet might it yield a higher grace?

Human tragedies—a fleeting jest;
The ocean claims but those too weak.
“Inhuman?” Perchance I but attest
To what no heart can hope to tweak.

I feel the wind’s untamed caress
And taste the thunder’s potent roar;
Feel Earth’s deep tremor’s harsh distress—
Deserving rescue? Lost in lore.

The elements’ scourge lies swift and blind,
Its crushing weight defies reprieve.
Embrace the fate that binds mankind,
And heed the seas’ relentless plea.

The seas’ great roar, the wind’s lament,
Earth shaking free from every chain—
All may deliver your descent
And send you to the endless plain.

To that eternal realm of rest,
Where seas lie still, no waves to crest,
And where, alas, no leaf is stirred—
The earth shall wake no more from dreams.

Within those silent halls of time,
No evil shall again pursue.
Only the lyre’s soft, haunting chime—
Perhaps… this is the perfect world?

I live,
but it is not life.
A corpse cradles your love,
too cold to feel,
too empty to remember
the warmth of a touch
that never reached me.

Your love is a wound,
a thing I carve into my chest,
a knife I hold with trembling hands,
cutting deeper
with every breath.
There is no blood,
only a slow seep of darkness
that fills me,
blackening my veins,
eclipsing what’s left of light.

I wear your love like a shroud,
its fabric too thin to protect,
too heavy to carry,
dragging me deeper into the earth
where the air suffocates
and the ground weeps with regret.
Every step I take
sinks further
into the weight of you,
your absence that clings like rot,
a scent too putrid to escape,
too constant to ignore.

I hold your love,
but it is not love,
it is a thorn lodged in my ribs,
the poison seeping through my skin,
numbing,
filling me with a hunger
too dark to feed.

The silence between us is a scream,
a scream that never cracks the air,
but claws at the inside of my skull,
twisting my thoughts into ghosts,
my words into ashes
that fall before they reach the ground.

I live in the ruins of you,
a ruin that was never built to stand,
its foundation cracked with promises
too broken to rebuild.
And still,
I stand in the rubble,
a monument to your absence,
to a love that was never real,
a love that only took
and never gave.

I carry your pain,
but it is not pain,
it is a hollow weight,
a deep, infinite hole
where my heart should be,
a chasm that screams your name
with no voice to echo.

Still, I live,
but I do not.
I am a shadow of what was,
a flicker of what could never be,
and the air around me thickens,
filling with the stench of a love
that was never mine to begin with.

I sailed along the current of ages,
And pondered like many before.
But never beheld the sky’s bright stages,
Nor heard the rain’s soft pour.

I sailed along the current of ages,
Chasing dreams not meant for me.
Trapped in success’s gilded cages —
A fate I hope you’ll never see.

Rejoice in the beauty all around!
Behold what the world has to show!
Forget the days in sorrow bound,
Let your inner sunlight grow.

Gaze at the sky, so pure, divine,
And smile at its shifting hue.
See how the golden sun will shine,
And let its light sing through you.

Reflect — why feel so dismayed?
Is the world truly dark and dim?
Joy hides in every light and shade —
Just look, and let life brim.