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ZiyaMA May 23
He sat in stillness,
A holy book open in his hands —
Written in a language
That was not his own.
He read aloud,
Line by line,
His voice calm,
But his soul untouched.

I entered quietly,
Watched for a moment.
Then, without a word,
I reached for the jug —
Empty.
Lifted the glass —
Also empty.
I poured.
Then raised it to my lips
And drank slowly,
Eyes half-closed,
As if it were the best water in the world.

I set the glass down,
Satisfied.
A soft smile on my face.
He looked at me, confused.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“There was no water in that jug,
No drop in that glass.
Yet you drink like a thirsty man
Who’s found heaven!”
I turned to him, gently,
Still smiling.

“Sir,” I said,
“I learned from you.
You read words you do not understand,
And find peace in the sound.
I drank from what was empty,
And found joy in the act. If I am a fool,
Then what shall I call you?"
A silent act speaks louder than empty recitation. A parable of truth, belief, and the thirst for meaning
Kalliope May 23
Tiptoeing around the tension,
“I don’t know”  overwhelms my veins.
But lately I’ve had an idea,
Maybe it’s time for change.

No more hiding in “maybe,”
Or feeling safe behind “we’ll see.”
There’s no comfort in ghosting,
Just the crushing weight of accountability.

Or maybe the lack of it—between you and me.
I said I was protecting myself,
But this can’t be what that means.

I tried not to love you, kept my distance from the start.
But your charm cracked open
my reluctant armored heart.

You were clever, made more sense than others,
Quick wit, no regrets, and never forced me under covers.
So I let myself fall, thinking I’d be caught,
But my parachute? Just bricks I forgot.

You were ready to catch me, hands up in the air, it's not your fault that I crashed out, you're lucky I didn't land there.
I built a home in the land of maybes
It's lonely, until sunset
Then the ghosts come out for tea
alex May 22
The world lies serene from up here,
bright blinding lights
seem dim,
people like insects, crawling
insects like dust, clinging
and scuttling to their dark corners.
A place above all
where I can forget.
As I watch my feet swing
over the edge,
I'm not scared nor sad,
not thrilled either,
Just am.
From up here, even chaos looks calm.
Cadmus May 22
You don’t notice it at first.
Not really.
Life keeps you busy with noise, with dreams, with the next thing.

But then one day,
you cross an invisible threshold.
There’s no signpost, no celebration
just the quiet erosion of what once mattered.

The body falters first.
Not dramatically - no, it’s more insidious than that.
You wake up sore from sleep.
You get winded climbing stairs you once ran.
You start measuring your days in energy, not hours.

Then come the dreams
the ones you clung to like anchors.
They begin to dissolve.
Some shrink into hobbies, others vanish with a sigh.
And the ones that remain?
Too fragile to chase, too old to birth.

Your beliefs shift too.
Not because they were wrong,
but because the world keeps insisting you make room for things
you once swore you’d never tolerate.

You adjust.
You settle.
You survive.

But the worst part
the part no one warns you about
is the people.

One by one,
they begin to leave.

Some give you time.
They let you prepare your goodbye.
Others vanish mid-conversation,
leaving cups half full and promises unfinished.

And what’s cruel is not just that they’re gone
it’s that nothing fills their space.
You try.
You pretend.
You build new connections like patchwork quilts.
But nothing fits quite right.

Because love, real love, isn’t replaced.
It’s carried
as ache,
as memory,
as absence you learn to walk around like a piece of furniture in the dark.

You keep going, of course.
What else can you do?
You make tea.
You water the plants.
You smile at strangers and nod at the sky like it still owes you something.

But deep down, you know:
This is what it means to age
not the wrinkles, not the gray.
It’s the slow, silent disappearing
of everything that once made you feel
alive.
Aging is not just the passage of time , it’s the quiet art of learning how to let go, again and again, without ever quite mastering it.
I’ve hidden lost sermons in my casual breath.
I folded them tight, pushed them into sarcasm.
We laughed at the joke, but you missed the ambiguity.
Some words only sharpen once their form leaves a chasm.

Some things we call unstable, wrong, or unfit—
Become relics we look to, only once their time’s gone.
No one hears the meaning of a prophet, mid-scream,
But we quote them the day that their truth breaks the dawn.

Some of us never even asked to be understood,
We can only hope to echo in your afterthought.
Because truth’s never loud—It’s subtle... Its dissonant…
So, its often mistaken, or ignored left to rot.

I live like a myth half-believed by its maker.
I pulse in and out, like static through wires.
My silence burns louder than sermons of choirs,
In golden temples built on sinful desires.

I left signals in inkblots, on letters I never sent,
And in the way that I’d pause before saying goodbye.
One day you might study those absences closer—
They’ll sing of my essence when I can no longer try.

Cause I once left my essence outside in the rain.
Just to see if it rots, or if a new one would sprout.
Turns out, it likes to sing—but only backwards,
And only to those who tried blocking it out.

This left me so lost that I swallowed a compass,
Just to feel in my gut, something real point to me.
But the needle kept swaying like my body still does.
Some directions are given, some were never meant to be.

If you were to ask me what my words really mean,
I might say, “What makes you think they mean anything?”
Meaning is a parasite; it only lives when it’s fed—
And I’ve starved that parasite to death. Repeatedly…

There’s a hallway in me that will never lead out—
Just dissociates to ensure you’re alone.
The paradox is fixed. You can’t change its course.
You’d rather tread blind, but it demands being shown.

I might carve these bitter truths into the air.
Won’t  see them, but you’ll cough, and know they were there.
You’d blame me for the smoke, and you’d call me unstable.
Ignore my intention, or you might not even care.

And maybe I am filthy, misbegotten, and unstable.
But when my tremors stop, I hope you notice my frame.
And the glow that I buried, might finally surface.
Then you might learn to love me for the darkness you shamed.

You might quote this clean, rid my words of the blood.
Say my signals were sent, from the God in your head.
When you sing my sad sonnets, you might guild them in gold.
I promise... This sounds so much better when I’m dead.

©
♦ Đerek Λbraxas ♦️
"The Quantum Bound Poet"
Zywa May 21
In the tea house with

the water lanterns we feel --


life flowing through us.
Novel "An Artist of the Floating World" (1986, Kazuo Ishiguro), chapter 'November 1949'

Reflection of lanterns on the river

Collection "Stream"
Asher May 20
whenever i’m real,
nobody hears.
the media prefers silence
wrapped in static,
muted truths.

i speak of faith,
of laws,
of power
and watch the room
empty.

but sadness?
ah...
they lean in.
eyes soft,
nods rehearsed.
the ache is digestible.
the wound, relatable.

funny, isn’t it?
how we hush the loudest truths
yet cradle
our quiet despair
like it's holy.

we ignore the roots,
but mourn the rot.
it's funny.
almost.
evangline May 20
I often wonder about death.
I often wonder about the halting of our breath.
Is it really as peaceful as they all tend to say?
Or just as terrible — in a different kind of way?

I wonder about death,
Time slowly slipping by.
I wonder about life,
Moments gently passing by.

We are all caught up in ourselves,
Doing this and doing that,
When we should really be chasing
The dreams we once had.

“Death is part of life,” some say.
It catches up with you — and ends the play.
The games we play, with ourselves and our minds,
Telling ourselves we’re fine,
When we’re really losing our minds.

There will come a time,
When you will say:
What was all this for, anyway?

Don’t let that phrase haunt your mind.
Make something of yourself — and this little sweet life.
Don’t strive to be the best,
Just strive to strive.

And soon you will see,
That’s really all it takes —
To be someone you admire,
Not someone who’s fake.

I wonder about death,
Not so often anymore.
I enjoy the trivial things,
Not so worried anymore.
written between study sessions and existential dread <3
AE May 20
Right at the seam of the blue lake
childhood runs through the sand
I, cautiously keep my feet on the rocks
leaving behind new footprints
laughing about what still makes us kids
leaning against the fallen tree trunks
that never abandon us to find our balance

I reach out, with both hands
and between *******
are worlds, and worlds, and worlds
Kalliope May 16
2v8
You and your romantic ways, your countless list of reasons, your lovely lilac haze
Shadowed only by your fears there's not a universe where I stay.

Battled me.

And all my disarray
The timing and the distance, my thoughts that force resistance.
My lack of patience sure put up a fight, and mix her with my temper and we'll be here all night.
My fear, always ready to run, pulling me back behind the wall I built, away from the warmth of your sun.
If we matched our armor, and coordinated our attack
Perhaps we could've been on the same side, instead of bleeding back to back


I know you hate that game mode
But I thought the chances were better
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