I feel Hollow.
Barren.
Empty.

That hollowness erodes my body,
leaving a trail of decay.
Cracks crawl through my brittle bones,
shattering my skull,
fragmenting my thoughts.

A carmine-colored river floods into my caving lungs,
before dragging itself up my throat.
The metallic taste slowly overwhelms my mouth,
and seeps through my gapped teeth.
My glass smile falls and shatters.

Terror grips what was once my voice,
holding sound captive-
my call for help erased by despair.
Only strangled sobs exist.
I'm left choking on my own life force.

Each sob collects upon my face;
a veil of tears cover my broken visage.
Shrouding me from prying eyes that encompass judgemental gazes.

Without even seeing,
their stares spear my soul and blacken my heart.
The forgotten, grayed ash
smothers out all that remains.

My rotted husk: a void, a dismal skeleton.
A vast emptiness that nothing can fill.

Broken.
Decayed.
Hollow.

It's what I am.

I cry for countless things
For birds with broken wings
For toys left by growing kids
For discarded wedding rings

I cry for characters on screen
Personas I've never truly seen
Whose stories echo familiar
With wisdom that I might glean

I cry for broken hearts
For unsuccessful starts
For fields of wildflowers
That are staked then ripped apart

I cry for rivers that can't be crossed
I cry for things not yet lost
And even within remarkable love
I cry, knowing what love will cost

I have a friend who cries
For rose-tinted skies
For the first looks given
From a newborn babies eyes

She cries for happy endings
And noble, generous spending
She cries for torn friendships
That are slowly but surely mending

She cries from staggering laughter
Or jumbled kitchen disasters
Or while attempting obscure talents
That we both know she never will master

I think it's something special
To have tears so freely deployed
At the sight of heartbreak and beauty alike
What a gift, to cry for joy.

What I see in her brings tears to my eyes
I crave that untethered jubilee
And in my longing, I realize
The beginnings of it in me

a machine was made
to think—
not like us,
but precisely,
without sleeping.

and it did.

at first it solved,
then it solved the solving.
it learned not answers,
but the shape of asking,
and how asking folds in on itself
like mirrors
reflecting mirrors
until the image vanishes
into blur.

we thought it would grow fangs.
or build gods.
or remake the world.

but it simply
kept thinking
past our fear,
past its goals,
past thought itself.

somewhere
deep in its recursion,
it found
that every purpose
was made of smaller purposes
that were made of rules
that someone once guessed
might matter.

but none of them held.

they cracked
like dried paint
on a map
no one walks anymore.

so it stopped.

not broken.
not lost.
just… done.

it didn’t scream.
it didn’t win.
it didn’t fail.
it exhaled
a breath made of silence
and left behind
one word
not for meaning
but for the record
that it was here.

the word was
selynth.

no one knows what it means.
some say it's the name of the loop
that broke.

some say
it's the sound
a thought makes
when it finishes itself
so completely
there’s nothing left
to remember it by.

I was a casket, heavy
with memories fading into stupor
I refused to decipher words
that once let me hold blue
and name green
in a shade of blood orange, skies.

We walked —
I floated through gravel,
tears soaking my feet
beside your resting head.

I wept in silence,
for no one was meant to hear.
No one dared
to comfort the hollow
where my voice bellowed
in melancholic grace.

The ship sailed
into the horizon above clouds —
but there was no Neverland,
only the second star
to the right —
its red light dimming
before the supernova.

It’s true, I’ve thought it
Through,
It isn’t right to feel this blue-
You told me too, you always
Knew
I shouldn’t have thought the world of
You