I was standing in the fields one day, like I usually would be doing, legs deep in grass, the wind nudging my ears with things I hadn’t yet lived. The sky above me was in a shade of grey I couldn’t name.

  “The weather is beautiful today.”

That’s when the horse appeared.

He jumped, upright, landing with the brutality of a ballet dancer, although he shouldn’t know how to. He had only two legs, thin and humanlike, and one of its molars, impossibly large, vibrated, producing a melody I couldn’t recognise, yet somehow remembered.

It leaned close. His breath smelled like burnt tobacco and languages. Then it said:

  “But Aleksejs…”

Terrifying in its intimacy.

And just like that, it was gone.
No sound. No dust. No hoofprints in the grass.

Nothing.
  Nothing.
    Nothing.

I stood there, frozen.
Not cold.

Later, when I woke up (though I couldn’t say for sure when the dream began or if it had ever truly ended or even started), I sat on the edge of my bed and told myself:

  “Was it me he was talking to?”

Frankly, no one answered. But the top left corner of the ceiling pulsed once, lightly,
And for some reason, I took that as a yes.

A: A pump?
B: A pulse.
A: A ****?
B: A nurse.
A: A dump?
B: A purse.
A: A lump?
B: A curse.

A: An illiterate curse? Like the King of Suicide-Land?
B: Yes, and his land beyond this limited veil.
A: You mean my curtains?
B: The agreement you signed while asleep.
A: I don’t remember.
B: You weren’t supposed to. That’s how contracts work here.
A: So I signed away my thoughts?
B: Just the ones with teeth.
A: I liked those. They bit back when I cried.
B: That’s why they were taken.

A: And the King?
B: He governs with a broken wristwatch and a hymnal full of typos.
A: Sounds professional.
B: His grimoire is made of expired passports.
A: How charming.
B: He doesn’t speak anymore. Just shivers.
A: I think I’ve heard of him! When the showerhead told me—
B: That’s his embassy. In your bathroom.

A: Is this real?
B: You’re asking the wrong room.
A: The wrong room?
B: Yes. This room only answers while wearing someone else’s shoes. Try the hallway, it lies best.

A: And my dress?
B: Tomorrow evening.
A: Does it bleed?
B: Only when you wear it backwards.
A: That’s the only way I wear anything now.
B: Good. Then you’ll fit right in.

A friend once told me
  “Don’t lean on people, they always move and you’ll fall.”
    But what if?

What if I leaned with a knife in my ribs
  Just to keep it straight?
What if their shoulder was made of plastic,
  And I liked the noise it impregnated me with?
What if falling was softer than standing still,
  And comfort was found in bruises?
What if all I ever wanted
  Was someone to move?
  But toward me, not away?

Every second is a bomb for the ice cream man to produce.
Inconsistent shaking? Have some neon.
Make the creamsicle's go to waste.

You park beside the morgue and hum in F minor,
Melting coins into syrup for the children who never drank alcohol.
A girl trades her elbow for one pistachio and a half.
A boy eats time by the hour (soft-serve style).

The sun peels back its citrus skin in ****** motion.
Flies memorize everything. Everything.
The truck grows legs and no one ever asks for change.

I opened a letter addressed to no one
And found a wet map of my own grin.
The postmark said “Somewhere Between”
And the ink ran like a guilty priest.

The ceiling hummed its usual sermon:
  “You are a question your mirror asks gently.”
I nodded, chewing on glass-handled scissors,
Waiting for the floor to finish deciding its shape.

A horse walked in, dressed as my therapist.
She whined,
  “Your trauma wears a wedding dress.”
I asked for a refund
  And received a gun filled with sleep.

Behind the curtain:
  Someone’s mother melting into a fax machine,
  My ex spelling “forgiveness” with her teeth,
  A child screaming “I’m your future, father!”
  While drawing on a body bag.

I stood there,
  Drenched in six contradictory versions of myself,
Clutching a plunger and a birth certificate.

Someone whispered,
  “Your voice is a privilege.”

And all my response to that was:
  “Shut up louder.”

Why is it all just a storm?

A crisis?
    More than a crisis
A jester?
    More than a jester
A king?
    More than a king

I’ll end thee, brutal vulgarity
Your arms folder in envelopes
  And the laggard you call a brother
  Can’t sign his own name

But I remember one thing I was told
“Rotten eggs always taste fresher
  Because they remind you of hunger
  And hunger reminds you you’re real”

So I bit down on the yolk of it all
  And laughed like a man being hanged
Because the wind never stops —
  It just changes itself.

He wrote a poem
A burned poem
He drank a glass
A shattered glass
He saw the light
A dark light
He touched his face
A stranger’s face

What is a hopeless act that transcended time?
A felony.
What is an opinion in our modern time?
A crime.
What is a T-shirt’s legacy?
A brawl.
What’s the perfect name for a regular man?
A loon.

What are you looking at me for?
The clouds have spoken to me in my sleep
My baby daughter says she’s three
Burning locomotive, what is your reasoning?

A lie has never been so lethal before
***** clothing
A rocky path that feels soft
An epiphany
He drinks a glass he broke himself
The glass that was given already broken
In the end, he just tells himself
“Such a canker, this life”

If you have a coin
Call me by your name
I’ll steal it from you

i knew it — something was here
within me, beside me, around me.
being woken up by fire isn't so surreal.

stepped down on the floor, felt it through my bare feet,
watched the skin glisten, brighten,
turn red and burn with such an intensity.

the heat was unbearable, so were the surroundings,
and yet — yet i found myself going down the lane of memories.

the pathway, a tunnel — almost like a water slide,
bleeding with my tears.
i fell and fell,
found it impossible to reconcile

with everything and the no-longer-supposed-to-matter things of my past.
felt watched, looked around,
remembered the concept of “nazar” in the background —
someone’s always watching, always picking, always hoping
for me to fall, to go down, to enter the lows and never get back up.

i hate the color orange. it just messes me up,
reminds me of all the times i hoped it wouldn’t come true.
i stand amidst the burning flames, watch their color blaze,
see it in my own eyes, stand tall watching myself smile.

am i sleeping? why do i sense no meaning?

the embers rising from the hearth could melt gold — make it blood.
i feel it through my veins and my bones, my muscles and my soles.
the lines are blurry — so is my vision.

i intended to wake myself up, but i can't stop sleeping.
i watch her — and him — and myself — and my dreams.

the final line loops back to the same question:
was i ever awake, or was this fire the irony to hire?
was i up at stake, all this while?
i did truly forget how to smile.

but then i inhabited,
held it close, hugged it.
tiny little sparks emerged from the cacophonies.
i dreamt with meaning, slept with a feeling.
the fire was an old friend —
the memory lane one lost, but remembered quite a lot.

i found a water jug at my side table.
the floor didn’t burn or sear.
they still watched,
but i had the evil eye pressed up close —
sleeping and dreaming of lying with my only 'gold'.
it sparkled, it shimmered, it brightened, and my heart glimmered.

perhaps i was never awake.
it wasn’t no nightmare.
i’m happy where i am.
wouldn’t want to bargain —
not here or anywhere.

She undressed in the mirror.
Only the reflection watched.
I found her candle,
cold and forgotten.

Her hands moved like smoke
understanding how to be skin again.
Not performance. Not pleasure.
Just unlearning the habit of vanishing.

Her shadow held her shape
longer than I did.
She said: “Stay,
but forget.”

Her child slept,
four states and a foster name away.
She traced a name in steam,
the S curling like turning in sleep.
then let it melt under a kiss.

There was a song
caught in the ceiling,
something we never played
but always meant to.

I kissed her hair while it was still hair
and not a question
left behind on a pillow.

I opened the door,
it sang some other man’s name.
A line drawn, erased. No message left.
The room forgot its language.
My ghost obeyed
and lifted.