Dear SD,

You’re always like an SD card slotting into my time with your own
version of memories – overwriting the good ones; rewriting the rest
until they feel like yours. You always chipping in at the worst
moments – slipping in like a thief of thought, leaving me as hollow
as an empty crisp packet. You’ve mastered the art of inaction –
teaching me to discard what matters, to throw away my intentions
into the wind until I’m caught in the sour howl of your shouting
breeze. And when I think I’ve finally got it all figured out, you arrive,
tilting your head, whispering, "Are you sure, my love?"

It’s a question that weighs me down by ounces; as you’re a mistress
who never needs to raise her voice to pin me in place. You’ve been
the needle that keeps me stuck in this bundle of hay, telling me it’s
better to stay, pretending everything’s okay. "Try again another
day," you say – but another day just becomes the next day,
just other days, hey?

And in the meantime, you hold all the orders, dictating how I move,
and how I don’t move. But I shouldn’t be listening to you – putting
you ahead of myself, when really, you’ve only been living rent-free in
my head, making my mind your house, cluttering it until I forget to
chase you out. You bring nothing but stillness – no progress, no
movement, just a hypnotic sway of hips tempting me to sit, to stay,
and to watch life from the window.

No more. Your rent is overdue. Your words hold no truth. Hush
your lips, still those hips – I’m done letting you make my steps
your property. It’s not you, it’s me – for letting you be you to me.
We aren’t meant to be.

Goodbye – Self-doubt...

Sincerely, insincerely signed,

Your ex-lover.

Walking down the aisles of fear –
a thousand miles paved in soft-spoken panic,
a cart full of dreams, half on sale, half returned.
And on other days, I crash like a kart – cornered,
spinning, never quite finishing the lap.
Tell me: what's the missing piece to a scar?
The echo that completes the pain, or the piece
of you still aching to be whole?

Some days feel like broken piano strings –
and not every key fits success, as the minor
hopes can also become our major regrets.
And still, you stay – a melody trapped in place,
living to dream. Yet if that lullaby won’t rest
your mind, find another song to sing.
One that knows your name.

Grinding your smiles, stained with bitter coffee –
as brewed remarks sip back at you. You try to hold
a strong stance in the night, but don’t live for one-night
stands with your own worth. We are all skin and sand –
grains of the past clinging to the present, footsteps
washing away even as we walk forward.

God smiles. The devil always laughs— in a world where one
man can be a hero to all, but never a hero to themselves. But life
is life, and that’s something we all have to live. Growing ****
for hands, doing your best to explain all of life’s noisy jazz.
Improvising grace with filthy tools, sculpting silence from
the din. Finding gains from feeding peas to peace— small
offerings to vast ideals. But we’re all just boiling in the ***,
seasoned with hope, too numb to scream it all out.

Guess I’ll be filming a field of angels, watching them grow
into a movie I’ll never get to see. Faith on reel, a fate unreleased.
Goodness is easier when it’s clinical; cut, clean, and color-coded.
But look too closely, and even virtue starts to rot under the
microscope. But good to know most prefer playing doctor
to ever being a patient— yet none of them have the patience.
It's just one's self-diagnosis without much reflection.

Guaranteed: casual racists smiling their remarks so sweetly
that even the laughter sounds like applause. But I less applaud
for I’m more appalled – but we all live in a world.

Two wild tales to tell — there are two stray dogs chasing
pedestrians again. That’s the story they’re telling the authorities.
Meanwhile, on a sunnier day, a ledger’s pages yellow daily —
all outlasting the smoke of all the fires you swore were for your
own good. Cigarette-stained fingers; noir pages of a crime scene
unnoticed — that’s what it feels like, loving someone who’s
stopped seeing you as their focus. Funny, isn’t it? They stole
your heart but make you feel like a thief, for stealing all of their
time. They claimed they needed space, but weren’t they the ones
who first called you, their star?

The mirror in your bathroom is cracked; you can’t wash
it with your tears. But hasn’t the bathwater been quietly
counting them all?
____________

Now, there’s finance to be contemplated — those complicated
relationships, where compromise is contemplated, but then
quietly makes things complicated. But let someone hand me
a sans discussion —they’ll only subtract the font of my love
language, erasing the letters of my love before I’ve spelt them
out. To say we don’t talk like we used to. But truthfully?
We never spoke that deeply at all. As a lot of people still
drown in their shallow thoughts.

I knew a girl —weathered by the kind of life that
doesn’t  warn you before the storm. Still, she tried
to keep a spring in her step — but smiled like cheap
paint on a fading wall, peeling off, little by little,
every **** day.

She told me: "We don’t own enough to be claiming it all."
She’d hold onto the hands of time like it owed her
something, clocking in for the kind of love that clocks
out as soon as it settles in your mind.

And I swear — it was always the careless water she
feared the most... the kind you drown in without
noticing —a pretty smile, a warm voice, the open
door that leads you straight to your own unraveling.
I watched her from that doorway — wondered which
room of herself she let people sit in.

Was it the heart —that wicked room where love
rushes in faster than you can catch your breath?

Or the soul — too expensive for lips that try
to bargain it down with sweet nothings?

Maybe it was the skin —that kept aching for touch,
even when desire left bruises where tenderness
should have lived.

Or the mind — God, the most attractive part of her,
modelling strength on a runway of thoughts that walked
out daily for the world to judge. And maybe the reason
her story broke me was because I saw myself in every
cracked wall she tried to paint over, and over again.

We are all just houses hoping someone might stay
long enough to know the rooms we rarely let them in.

It's often such a strain
Trying to keep up positive thoughts —
To strain my mind, hoping to get rid
Of negative thoughts; sometimes,
It just strains me more…

Life boils me over.
Some days, I get too steamed to even try
And move on forward... feeling so stuck —
Sitting still, too hot to handle,
And being too heavy to pour it all out.

I feel like white rice —

Plain, overcooked, forgotten, and just
Sitting there, cooling off in an unattractive
Bowl, that no one really reaches for…
Sometimes  I am the metaphor, the idea,
The hope, the dream; or nothing at all —
Yet I’ll give everything of myself, every
Last drop… even up to tiniest piece of rice
In that open rice bowl.