i won’t call you the sun.
you don’t hurt my eyes,
or blind me with your light.
you shine spectacularly,
but in a gentler sense—
like cherry blossoms,
ornamental in essence,
never promising sweet fruit
even if i help you grow.
but i don't expect any really,
i just want to admire your beauty
from the shadow you provide.

you’re not the moon, either.
you don’t need to borrow light—
you burn bright on your own.
your dark spots
don’t define your beauty;
your talent, your smile,
your infectious laugh,
your thoughts and care
outshine any flaws—
though honestly,
i don’t see any at all.

you are the nebulae.
beautiful and multicolored,
more than the eye can see,
more than the mind can reach.
you carry galaxies in your eyes—
light green and yellow-brown,
like forests and deserts,
the beauty of the earth
and the wonder of the universe
meeting in one gaze.

you are the stars.
seemingly small,
yet impossibly immense;
seemingly rare,
yet impossibly dense.
the only star i look at
like a sailor looks at the north star—
an essential on the sea,
guiding him home.

you are the mystery
that makes me trace lines in the sky,
connecting dots,
trying to find meaning
in what’s before me.
i want to understand you,
but you are so beautifully complex.
i used to think i was smart,
but you make me want to be better.
you are poetry—
the kind i cannot fully understand,
the kind with a thousand meanings,
and none i can settle on.

i see you everywhere
from the prettiest flower in the field
to small little song lyrics

i see you when the wind blows though the trees and they wave hello to my heart
i see you when i see your favorite color
or your favorite food

i see you every time i listen to your favorite songs
when i read the lyrics i remember how much i love you
i see you everywhere

from the comforting rain
to anyone who mentions your name
i remember that my heart
is forever yours

even if we parted ways
i could never forget you to that day
my heart would still be yours
and i would yearn for the comfort of your embrace

whenever i softly hum
my mind always drifts to you and your soft voice
and i remember that i see you everywhere

and i promise
that i would never forget any detail about you
from your favorite color, to your birthday, or your sweet smell
i would still see you everywhere.

i always loved rap, drill, and trap more than any music genre out there
like lil peep, central cee, and travis scott.
then one day, you ranted about how much you loved maroon 5
and ever since that day, it was your favorite song from them, “she will be loved” that i’ve been listening to until my earphones wear out.

i was never a big fan of donuts, especially the chocolate flavor.
it was always too sweet for my liking, that’s all.
until i saw you eat a chocolate donut, the only flavor of donuts you like.
from that day on, i always got myself a chocolate donut every time i craved something sweet.

art was something i absolutely ****** at.
i tried and tried but i always ended up failing miserably.
that was until i saw you show off your drawings, ones of your favorite characters.
since then, i’ve been practicing and practicing until i could finally draw and paint you, my favorite piece of art.

i never really saw a reason to be happy in my life;
it was always the same cycle of betrayal, broken trust, and so on.
but then i saw you dancing happily in the rain as you were listening to all your favorite songs
and starting then, i finally found a reason for me to love life:
seeing your happiness— and just you, entirely.

its coming up on a year
a year without you
longer than I had with you to begin with
and I can say I don't think of you often
in passing more than anything
and i feel little about it

I know one day it will be my wedding day
someday, as lace cinches my waist and vows hover in the air,
as i get ready you’ll cross my mind
not from longing, just a glitch in memory’s muscle
curiosity killed the cat but I’ve been dead all my life
so I’ll wonder where life has taken you
and I’ll be glad I don’t know for sure, glad you’re not at the end of the altar waiting for me
and maybe I’ll have the children I would never have been able to have with you
and they’ll like poetry, and I’ll think of you again
I’ll teach my boy to not act the way you did, the way I hope by then you don't either

I’ve come to accept that thinking of you will happen
you shaped me as a person and six months can hold a lot of weight, turns out
I’ve stopped worrying about subconscious meanings
I think of you not because you still hurt me, not because I’ve not moved on
I think of you the way i do about those mornings when I was seven and watched the tv all alone  just to let time pass
in the way i think about that one mean girl from middle school, or that pretty girl from high school
in the way i think about my grandpa, the memories few and blurry and probably half made up
in the way i think about my first job, a lesson of bitter taste followed by so much better
in the way i think about every other boy that came and hurt and went

in my writing anyone can tell i'm a fraud
just a painter trying their hand at a new form
composition swapped for sentence structure,
verses on pages where watercolors on canvases once laid

in your writing i can tell you're a fraud
you put words into your mouth, hope people believe them yours when they spill out
a performative emotional ventriloquist waiting for applause

i used to think writers romanticize and painters show,
after all you were my frame of reference when it came to poetry
but I’ve since learned you’re just not truly a writer

I put down the pencil and picked up the ink
and hey i'm not half bad but you’re not half good
i tried to speak your language not realizing you didn’t know it either
kept handing you words you could rewrite into warnings

come to think of it you never tried to speak mine,
never tried to translate me, never grabbed charcoal
and maybe it's for the better,
you would have smudged it around to cover up who i am
you mime meaning and call it understanding,
i was wrong in mistaking your performance for presence
maybe you being a **** writer wasn't all bad,  if it kept me from the monster you actually believed i am
maybe you being a **** writer is why i too fell in love with the version of me you crafted, she’s a little less ruined

the more i look back the more things i notice, more things to write about
like how your poems were never directed at me,
i was not the audience you were pandering too because you knew you already had me hooked,
no, instead you wrote to another public,
I was a character in your songs you could show off, let people pick and ****
made me into a myth, a tale parents tell their kids to scare them into sleep
you were my muse and the person i was trying to reach with my strokes
not realizing there was no heart to reach for

so i write now and you still don't paint,
if you did i think you’d be bad at it anyway
you’d hate cubism, seeing more than one perspective seems to fracture your mind
and you’d find a way to romanticize it all, put reality aside
you never were good at taking things at face value,
even worse at translating and encompassing things bigger than you
I was the stars but knowing you, you’d just paint a blank black sky, add your own galaxies to and call it a piece worth while

either way i still write, usually about you, always directed at you
i find new words and try to rewrite the story you told,
but if i ever show the public I’ll be sure to make it an illustrated book with all the imagery i know you can't paint

He picked up the fruit, mistook the shine for something familiar
Thought the crimson red meant safety
a comfort food he remembered from childhood

Hungry and eager, tongue sliding over lips
he popped it into his mouth
biting down hard
expecting raspberries’ familiar flood

But the sound of something breaking met him instead
A tooth chipped on the cherry pit
It was a cherry after all

Starvation had blurred his sight
He thought I was soft, sweetness of an old friend
But I was never raspberries
He just never looked long enough to know

The illusion shattered in his mouth
iron taste instead of tartness
He spat it out, blood and juices mingling
bone and pit, both broken, indistinguishable now

He walked away, changed but not beyond repair
red-stained hands already reaching for another low-hanging fruit
too desperate to clean before, too desperate to care,
too starved to seek fruit he might like more
The cherry lay behind, torn and spent
pit smashed, flesh split wide

In time, the earth will cover it
The water will nurture what remains
Years will pass, roots will sprout
The cherry blossom will rise strong again
And in the branches
more cherries will grow
sweeter than they ever were before

you told me once I was bright
insisted on it as I tried to tell you I wasn't, tried to show you
You said you'd hear none of it
I mistook your wish to not listen as a promise you saw, saw me
I know now, you never did
you were holding a candle, mistaking its glow for my own as its heat warped my reflection
the orange haze altered the way my skin looked, made the shadows retreat out of sight

I had to think back hard
trying to remember when you began to alter reality’s way for your comfort
I think it was from the start
You brought the candle with you from day one
I see you carry it everywhere, erasing your own darkness with it even now
It makes sense, I saw the glow on your skin
i believed your praise so wholeheartedly
i assumed it was my own shine bouncing onto you
just as you said, insisted
with time of course, your eyes adjusted to the light so much so you could see me
the shadows zoning back in, everything too clear for your liking

and so naturally you moved the candle closer and closer and closer
Hoping its heat would keep changing and morphing that which you hate
would soften me, melt away the harsh edges I had spent years sharpening,
strip me down into something smooth, something pliable, someone you could claim to love
and each time it had less and less effect

It didn't hurt for a while if i’m honest,
sure, sometimes the heat made me sweat,
but I just assumed it was that warmth people talk about when they talk about love
there was not one butterfly in my stomach, just smoke in my lungs from where you were burning me,
lit me on fire in hopes whatever charred remains fit your fantasy
You expected me to be a Phoenix, raising pure from the ashes for your entertainment
as if that didn't mean I had to die first

And you know, it all makes it so much more hurtful to remember
when you walked away from the fire you started
sunglasses on claiming it was too bright for you
you took your stupid candle with you
always wanting to search for what you’re missing in someone else's flames

Here's what you don't know
In trying to light me up, you only managed to cast an even darker and bigger shadow,
behind my back where nobody sees, but I feel it's cold constantly
It almost makes me wish for the burn of the candle
tell me, is that not the cruelest part?