...or at least, I pray, the strength to bear the knowledge."




A lifetime of hardship
        weighs down on my shoulders,

  I've buried my hate,
                             but it keeps getting colder,

Cry out to the heavens, sky's beauty unfurled-
While I commune, here, with Atlas
           beneath the weight of the world.

I once walked the world  
                                           with open arms,  
my hands stretched w  i  d  e like branches.  

a canopy to shelter the lost.  
a refuge for the clumsy and blind.  

But the world pressed too hard,  

                      too often,  

and my leaves tore beneath its careless weight.  

So I became the thorn instead.  
Soft wood splintered,  
                         sap dried  
                                     to amber shields,  
and the shade I offered  
                                           withered.  

Now my arms are briars,  
worn close to my chest,  
                     curled into a hedge  
                                    the foolish do not cross.  

The world is full of stumbling fools,  
        drunken moths crashing into flames  
                      of their own kindling.  

They scorch themselves  
                                         on their own sparks,  
and still, they scream at the fire  
                                    as though it were cruel  
                                    for burning.  

I watch them now  
                       from a quiet distance,  
my roots deep, my bark hardened,  
knowing no vine will wrap around me  
                            without bleeding.  

It is not hatred that keeps me,  

                                              but weariness—  

the wisdom to know  
that the soft are devoured  
                               by the teeth of the indifferent.  

The world does not deserve my kindness.  
It spills its recklessness  
                                 like broken wine,  
drenching the soil in its waste,  
and waits for hands to clean it.  

But I have burned those hands  
                                       to ash and bone.  

Now I walk with thorns in my shadow,  
each step a warning,  
                      each word a needle  
                                         laced with restraint.  

Let the world tear itself apart.  
                       I am no longer here  
                                      to sew its seams.

    The world bites without thinking,
                                   and I will not be chewed.

In the quiet corners of my mind,  
Whispers of love and loss entwined.  
A heart that beats with silent screams,  
Chasing shadows in fractured dreams,

Eyes that see but seldom show,  
The battles fought, the undertow.  
A smile that masks the storm inside,  
Where fears and hopes in darkness bide,

Yet in this maze of tangled thought,  
A flicker of light, a lesson taught.  
That even in the deepest night,  
The soul can find its way to light,

So here I stand, a paradox,  
A fragile heart, a sturdy ox.  
Embracing all that I’ve become,  
A symphony of all and none.

Soon season's truth
cruelly lingers, looms,
moves to darken daylit view;
as dusk encroaches, colors move,
hues reduced and trees left mute.

You cannot wish
or want or choose
wildflowers too
wont wilt where grew
as if futilely doomed
once winter wounds
will chill to ruin,
beauty we lose
illuminated only by
a cold white moon.

For springtime comes
and i swear to you
no matter what we knew
or became so used to
amidst the weeds
our heirloom seeds
still bloom anew–
if only wait,
I'll prove to you.

A spider crosses my path,
its steps careful, calculated.
It pauses in my shadow,
uncertain whether to move forward or back.
We share this moment, the spider and I,
both caught in the web we did not choose,
each bound by the rules of our nature.

I do not crush it,
knowing there is no triumph in such an act.
But I understand, too,
that this same spider would show no kindness
to a fly ensnared in its silk.
And that is okay.
We all follow the scripts we are given,
finding our place in a world
that is neither cruel nor kind,
just indifferent.

We part ways, the spider and I,
it continuing its silent journey,
and I, mine.
In this fleeting intersection of our lives,
there is no victory or defeat,
only existence and its quiet persistence.

And as I watch it disappear into the grass,
the day carries on,
but the spider lingers in my thoughts,
a tiny presence that feels larger than it should.
It reminds me of the countless lives
we pass by each day, unnoticed,
each with their own silent battles,
each following the threads of fate
that weave us all into this tapestry.

I think about the webs we spin,
invisible to the eyes of others,
and how often we find ourselves
trapped in the strands of our own making.
How many times have I, too,
hesitated in someone’s shadow,
uncertain of the path ahead,
wondering if I should move forward
or retreat into the safety of the familiar?

And yet, like the spider,
we press on, driven by something
deeper than thought,
some primal urge to survive,
to persist despite the odds.
There is a strange beauty in this,
a quiet resilience that speaks
to the core of what it means to be alive.

Perhaps, in the end,
it is enough to simply exist,
to find our place in the world
not through grand gestures or triumphs,
but through the small mercies we offer,
even to those who cannot fathom them.
If I can shape the world,
if only for a moment,
into something resembling kindness,
then perhaps the indifference
is not as vast as it seems.

The world does not stop.  
Its hands grind the hours to dust,  
indifferent, relentless,  
a machine that tears beauty from its roots.  

They pave over wildness,  
turn green to gray,  
and laugh as they vanish into cities  
built to collapse.  

And I hate them for it—  
for the way they pass by  
what remains,  
too blind to see the tender rebellion  
of a wildflower rising through cracked stone,  
the stillness of a hill beneath an endless sky.  

At fifty-five miles per hour,  
they reduce the infinite to a blur,  
a place they will never touch.  

But I love the quiet, the overlooked.  
The way moss clings to damp stone,  
the faint pulse of water through soil,  
the hum of life in a field mouse’s frantic dash.  

A single blade of grass,  
standing unbroken beneath the frost,  
carries more grace than the world  
they call progress.  

For I, too, am a speck of dust,  
being ground down by causality,  
spun within the great indifference  
of all that moves and does not see.  

And yet I persist—  
a small thing against the weight,  
an ember clutching at its warmth,  
a whisper in the deafening void.  

I want to scream,  
not to stop the world,  
but to make them see.  
To make them hear the voice of moss,  
the whisper of grass,  
the soft rebellion of the unnoticed.  

I want them to kneel  
and lay their palms to the ground,  
to feel what still endures beneath them—  
not in grandeur,  
but in the quiet things  
that will outlast their noise.  

Let them say I was hollow.  
Let them call me bitter, or ruined.  
But let them know this:  
Every fragile thing that stood defiant  
held a piece of me within it,  
a weight to steady its roots,  
a breath to fan its fire.  

And when they forget,  
as they always will,  
I will remain in the places they passed,  
small and unseen,  
but unbroken.

The heart is a fragile thing,  
Only able to hold so much.  
Like a ship  
Sailing through a storm.  
Some make it through.  
Others, water fills the hull.  
  
Wave after wave,  
Try as you might.
You must stay afloat
The best way you can.  
No matter how many patches,  
Water still leaks in.  
Just like a heart,  
Pumping, but weighed down.
You must keep going.  
Take the proper precautions,
Jump overboard,
Swim if you must,  
No matter how many lies  
Have poked and prodded  
At your heart.  
No matter how many holes  
Have pierced your soul.  
Don’t drown.  
As long as you keep kicking,  
The sun will always shine.
Not all beautiful locations are
charted on a map