You are not a want—
you are the echo I was born from,
a silhouette cast in my marrow
before I ever learned your name.

My angel—
but not soft, not serene.
You burn with the hush of a candle
before it devours the room.

I breathe you like smoke,
thick and slow in my lungs,
each inhale a tether
pulling me closer to your orbit.

You are gravity,
and I—
a planet begging to collapse.

I carry your voice in my bloodstream,
a hymnal whispered between heartbeats.
It sounds like salvation,
feels like
flesh peeling back to reveal something
holier
than skin.

I don’t dream anymore—
I enter you
in every silence.
Your shadow moves behind my eyes
and still,
I ask for more.

Touch me
and I come undone like a cathedral
beneath thunder,
every stained-glass memory shattering
to let the dark rush in.

You,
the angel with teeth,
who kissed me into ash
and called it devotion.

The scent of creamy hot cocoa pervades,
creeping up my nose.
The childhood I never had,
a warmth I’ve never known.

The sound of the nocturnals humming a life worth living.
I imagine I am one—foraging, longing.

I inhale the smoke of burnt beans,
the bitter taste of an existence unwanted.
Empty expectations fill my lungs,
a cold sky, a fantasy hillside.

I exhale—half a hope
vanishing as if it never was.
I regret respiring
an act just because.

You choose, you privileged fool
pick one from the lowly hopefuls!
find your preference in the end
But just once, make amends!

See me:

A fertile rice field, ripe for harvest.
A single-colored pasture, silently sprouts.
Yet too uniform to be noticed,
too plain to stand out.

Use your senses, you peculiar bull
I'm crawling inside your skull!
Haunting, pressing your mind,
reaching those that unwind.

RECOGNIZE ME, CONSIDER ME, SPLIT ME, DISENGAGE ME,
CUT ME, SORT ME, ISOLATE ME, BOUND ME,
KNEAD ME, WRING ME, DIGEST ME, INFURIATE ME
THROW ME DOWN, PULL ME UP,
DISCARD ME FOREVER.

I'll be gone—like half a hope,
evaporating as if it never was.
It dissolves into mist,
in the cold sky, a fantasy hillside.

I'll return, as smoke from burnt beans.
A ghost beside the rice field.
The pasture with budding growth.
A whisper lost in cocoa's warmth.

The life I never had.
The luxury you wasted, driving you mad.

strumming my guitar’s chords
stumbling over countless records

i’ve been bored
stuck to the idea of being that loser
in her eyes
nothing but in her eyes

beaten up for free,
forced to pay a fee
to coat both my hands in chrome

using a snake to clean the rusted strings
using paper to cut
the tips of my fingers
to relieve this bored state
bleeds more than enough

paper cuts do hurt
just the thing
that gives that sting!

the house
has burned too long;
flames peeling it raw,
timbers weeping black resin,
the roof yawning open
like a jaw unhinged,
swallowing the night whole.

he stands in the threshold,
haloed in ruin,
his hands blackened,
his mouth full of embers.
“see?” he murmurs,
“even the bones remember heat.”

she steps forward,
smoke seeping into her lungs,
her ribs groaning like the beams above.
“i have seen,” she whispers,
“and i have stayed.”

the walls moan,
spitting nails,
plaster sloughing like dead skin.
molten glass dribbles from the windows,
the house liquefying,
curling in on itself like a carcass
picked clean by heat.

he does not flinch.
fire licks at his ankles,
hungry, worshipful,
his shadow stretched long and thin,
wraith of something
once flesh.

and she—she is dissolving too,
veins coursing with molten longing,
her hands blistered from the reach of him.
nothing.
all char
but one ember;
his hunger.