She stands like a tree in autumn’s embrace, Golden leaves falling, shattered in grace.
Each broken piece catches the light, A quiet beauty, fragile but bright.

Yet weren’t they lovelier when they were whole? Before the cold air whispered its toll?
A breath of frost, sharp and unkind, The ghost of her past still trailing behind.

The river hums with a story untold, Its waters deep, relentless, cold.
It sings of wounds she hides so well, A silent storm, a private hell.

She has friends, or so she claims, Yet loneliness calls her by name.
Her silence lingers, soft but strong, Like autumn days, both short and long.

But when the river’s wind takes flight, Rustling leaves in the dead of night, Her soul, so quiet, starts to scream— A soundless echo, lost in a dream.

She was never meant for autumn’s sorrow, She was meant for spring, for a brighter tomorrow.

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?

Sometimes I love my reflection.  
Other times, he's just a bad friend—fixing his lips like he's about to interrupt me before I get my thought out good.  
When I stop speaking, so does he.  
What do you expect? He's me. ****.  
In truth, the bills are paid, and all current business is handled. But something is missing. It’s obvious. He just looks and shakes his head—my reflection.  
I'd be lying if I said I didn't care.  
I've gotten used to the silence that follows me. It's peaceful.  
When I make it home after a long day, if I touch something, I know where it is.  
If I cook something, I know there's more, even if I don't eat it all.  
He sits back and watches all of this.  
My reflection. Half the time, I pay him no mind. Sometimes, it's better that way.  

But sometimes, I wouldn't mind a bit of noise

She struck me  
out of the blue,  
the way that most beautiful songs  
find you.  
It plays out of nowhere,  
normally when you're out and about—  
one foot out the door,  
slipping through the holes  
of a random speaker.  
Before I knew, I was nodding  
my head.  
It's already full of things  
that don't matter.  
My head and the thoughts
That go through it.
Her voice cuts through all of that,  
a song you want to know the name of,  
so you can hear it again—  
one that you hope doesn't end too soon,  
but still delicate enough to not  
notice when she tips away.  
She's a song,  
a uniquely beautiful woman  
that you notice before she walks  
away.  

There's not enough in the world  
that makes sense.  
She pulls me in and confesses  
that she's just like me—  
the way that most beautiful songs do.  
I knew that I would chase her  
before she walked away.

Although ugly,
Something beautiful happens.
The air suddenly gets thick.
Your hand ***** up and flies
up to your mouth.
Lungs ache, just as we do.
They cling to breath as if
It's the last thing they have.
I cough, and my whole body heaves.
Just like you when I am behind you
My eyes tighten, and after a moment,
It's over.

A wet kiss turned inside out,
Bottled up and forced out.
An act of surrender,
Forced out in urgency.
A noise that signals sickness,
But at the same time
Searches for a fresh breath.
At times, a cough can be sickening,
Sometimes nasty.
But when everything rattles loose,
And that ache is gone.
Sometimes,
That's the best kind of love

I found a rainbow
In the middle of the night.
Stripes of color that look like it burst through the sky.
It cut through the clouds and took over the buildings.
There’s something different about the night.
At times, everything can seem dead.
But it has its pieces of heaven.
Indigo, blue, red, yellow, and purple.
All dressed bright, Standing on the corner,
Like everyone else that wasn’t asleep.
I suppose that it needed a place to hang out too.

The bend wasn’t as curved as the one you’ll see
Through the day.
It was relaxed and positioned in the sky,
in the way I supposed you would press your back
against the wall.
Then, just like that, It was gone.
Like a pretty woman with somewhere to go