I’ve never been the kind of person
who saves themselves.
I save others—
because it’s easier to drown saving them
than admit that I don’t know how to swim.

Call it a god complex.
Call it desperation.
Call it what happens
when you’ve spent your whole life
trying to make your bleeding useful.

I don’t save people to help them.
I save them to feel alive.
I pour myself into the cracks of their pain,
not out of kindness,
but because I’m terrified of my own emptiness.

I don’t know what I am without their chaos
to give me purpose.
Their wounds give mine meaning,
their shattering distracts me from the fact
that I’ve already fallen apart.

I don’t fix people out of love.
I fix them because I can’t stand
to look at someone else
and see the cracks I can’t fill in myself.
I fix them because if I can make them whole,
then maybe—
maybe—I’m not beyond saving.

But who am I kidding?
I don’t heal them.
I make them dependent.
I take their pain
and twist it into something I can hold.
I turn them into mirrors—
polished and sharp,
so I can see myself in their cracks.
I pour myself into their emptiness,
patch their wounds with pieces of my own soul,
then hate them for taking too much.

I feed them pieces of me until they can stand,
and then I hate them for leaving
when I have nothing left.

So I break them again.
Not because I want to—
but because I need to.
Because if they stop needing me,
then what the hell am I?

I press my fingers into their wounds,
just to watch them flinch—
just to make sure they still feel.

Because I don’t.
Not anymore.
Not in ways that matter.

And they thank me for it.
They thank me.
Because I’m careful with my cruelty,
quiet in my destruction.

It just feels disgusting,
the way I feed on their pain.
The way I tell myself
this is how it feels to matter.

I hate it.
I hate that I need them broken,
that I’ve built my worth on their dependence.
I hate that I call it love
when it’s anything but.

Because love doesn’t look like this.
It doesn’t look like carving yourself into pieces
just to fill the void in someone else.
It doesn’t look like giving away everything you are,
just to make sure they’ll stay.

But that’s all I know how to do.

I keep them close by breaking them slowly—
not enough to destroy them,
just enough to remind them
that I’m the only one
who knows how to put them back together.

And when they realize they don’t need me,
when they leave with their newfound strength,
I crumble.
Not because they’re gone,
but because they’ve taken the only proof I had
that I’m not worthless.

And I tell myself I don’t care.
That they’ll be back.
That I’ll find someone else
to fix, to break, to need me.

But deep down, I’m terrified.
Terrified of being alone with myself.
Terrified of the silence that screams louder
than any plea for help ever could.

But I don’t tell them that.
I don’t tell them I’m afraid of being alone—
that without their brokenness to distract me,
I’d have to face my own.
I don’t tell them that every time they thank me
for saving them,
it feels like a knife in my gut—
because I know the truth.

I am not a healer.
I’m not a savior.
I am a god of ruin.
I’m a parasite.
worshipped by those
too shattered to see the blood on my hands.

I live off their wounds.
I drink their tears like holy water.
I plant myself in their darkest places
and call it love.

And when they leave—
because they always leave—
I tell myself I deserve it.
That I deserve the emptiness they leave behind.
That this is what happens
when you make a home out of someone else’s pain.

But it doesn’t stop the ache.
The gnawing hunger for something I’ll never have.
The desperate, clawing need
to matter to someone,
even if it means ruining them to keep them close.

But I don’t stop.
I can’t.
Because I don’t know how to.
I don’t know how to be whole.
Because I don’t know how to love
without making it hurt.
And I guess,
I don’t deserve to.

I don’t know how to be loved
without being needed.
And I don’t know how to be needed
without making sure they’ll never leave.

And maybe one day,
I’ll stop pretending to be something I’m not.
Maybe one day,
I’ll let them go before I destroy them.
Maybe one day,
I’ll stop carving my survival into their scars.

But today isn’t that day.
Today, I’ll keep burning them,
keep breaking them,
keep tearing them down—
again and again.
because it’s all I know how to do.

sticking to my guns,
i never realized that
they’re pointing at me.

every day, he looked out the window,
his inhibitions toppling over like dominos;
he gawked at the blackbirds, all the same:
he could not tell a friend from a foe.

he never thought he’d go so far -
as to slay ‘the raven’ with a crooked crowbar;
his conscience dripped with sins, and rose -
a thorny heap of fallacies, charred.

he blamed the world for all he was;
convinced in his soul that he had a good cause:
it wasn’t enough to redeem his faux pas, so -
he bore the tag of an ill-fated outlaw.

of all the names, by which he was called,
who knew - one day - he’d cease to show up?
a child dead of his innocence, who
never learned how to -
as they say -

‘grow up!’

Right in front of the mirror
Couldn't be an error—
Stood the two, unfazed
By the look of crazed
On both of them;
Clock shows - 2 AM
One was mesmerized
While the other - agonized.
Eyes were amazed by
The beauty of face and body;
They both made a cry—
“Disgusting…”, “what a hottie!”

Gazing at the window said:
“Imperfect and ugly,
Selfish and a phony—
You should be dead!”
They saw there nothing but
Failure and total ****;
Grasping their neck, wishing it to be cut;
Felt the hate that went from—
The pits of abyss
Which was the soul of this—.

“The hair and that skin!
So smooth and clean
Face perfect as a goddess—
Divine self, more and not less!”
They were happy,
To shine, fully ready
For the loving and sharing
Their light, with caring,
To others' miserable selfs,
To save their broken shells.

But the clock struck again—tick-tock,
And the two froze, locked.
One whispered, "Who am I, truly?"
The other murmured, "Am I worthy?"
The mirror stayed silent,
Its truth’s still defiant.
Two minds at war, yet one body—
A perfect mess of soul and folly.

I hold on too tightly,
You tell me to ‘tread lightly.’
Fearful to let go,
you tell me “let’s just take it slow.”
you pull away;
I pull you close.

My nails sink deep into your skin,
You flinch away in pain-
I apologize,
Yet I pull you close again.

I kissed you too hard,
until your lips were blue and sore.
I ran my fingers down your back,
And made you bleed some more.

I kissed your neck,
Then you started to choke.
I held your face in my hands,
until it was fear I started to evoke.

I held you tight,
you started to suffocate.
I held on with all my might,
you continued to hesitate.

now I’ve lost you;

I hadn’t realized my hands had claws,
I had you clenched in my jaws.
If I could’ve just paused,
Maybe I’d seen the harm I’d caused.

Please understand what I have to do;
it was far too much to put us both through.

Now I keep my distance,
I couldn’t continue my persistence.
My kisses no longer linger,
like a bee whose lost its stinger.  

I stung you,
and pulled out my insides.

I won’t hold my lips to you neck,
or wait to hear your pulse.
I left us such a wreck,
I clung onto you like an impulse.

I held on too tightly,
until I had to completely let you go.
Now you’re just a pain that visits nightly,
you came in at a point where I was already at a low.

Why couldn’t I just take you slow?

Despite our muddy backgrounds,  
we congregated all the pureness and
reached out for the sun.
Promised that we’d stay untouched
from impurity.

Then nightfall alongside torment came.
You closed down,
submerged back into the mud we bloomed out.
And I heard you lament, submerged,
“I will live through this until it takes my life.”

Alone, I remained in the gloom.
The darkness of isolation crept up,
with muck jerking at my roots.
Within above, I told the moon,
“I’ll open for you another night.”

Inside myself, I suffocated
remembering who I was.
From the dirt we came,
grime that nurtured us,
the smite that we blossomed from.

Yet you shoved yourself back in,
took the filth as your selfhood.
Kept shut to the moon, believing
you are a facade
since no one knew your roots.

If anyone was ****, it was me.
The roots of yours could be ripped out.
Reflected in the sunshine,
still you’d be observed as clean.
I’d die a martyr for that belief.

The sun rises as you remerge,
the stains you’ve collected fall off.
You are left pure, intact,
despite it all.
You are my lotus.