Much worse than me are all the prior versions of myself,
all of them still stumbling through the riddle of identity.
Fate, destiny— both play me like a long lonely chord,
strumming my heartstring, a song both bitter & sweet;
truly the taste of a man’s casual defeat.

See if survival is a means to meet an end, then I’ve met
enough ends to know, each greeting feels like a farewell,
as each rise a false high that drags me lower still. And in
this place where I stand, this ground I call my own, are
the days life slowly feels like hell.

Much worse than me are the questions I can’t outrun:
do I hate myself, or do I hate the eyes that all watch me
through everyone else? “Oh, he sits on his ***, or he’s
someone just to chase ***,” they say— but truth is, I am
more of an *** to myself. Kicking myself for not doing
enough, and beating myself down for doing too much.

Much worse than me is the interference that shapes
me, this half-formed man that I keep trying to correct.
Incomplete, unfinished, still searching— as if figuring
it all out is not my burden alone, but it's the long road
of every man, he must walk.

More than the breath of a sigh —
I shut the front door, draw the curtains of my eyes,
turning toward a long prayer, and hoping for a sign.
I sign my name on a sigh, to dot myself in doubts;
quietly trying to align the stanzas of my life onto
these right lines.

For someone's booming voice rising in prayer;
you lift yourself as a public speaker, while I hide
my own voice in a speaker box, in the back of my car —
playing the music of these dreams only you can hear.

While the sunlight sinks into my skin, inhabiting me
like a parable. I live inside the story of another mystery,
a hidden teaching I pray I’m not just listening to, but also
one I'm slowly becoming.

We are creatures chasing the simplest endeavours —
where lovers fuse together when they find their spark,
to blow a fuse when nerves are frayed, and ride the same
fuse that carries a car forward; an engine humming with fire.

To love more than skin and bones,
to write the story of our lives — immense enough
to bring me to tears, where the full plotline goes unseen,
yet I pray to God I can at least follow all my lines.

And in all of it, this is a feeling of being alive.

Be have do
say
go get
make know think
take see
come want
look use find
give
tell work call
try ask need
feel
become
leave put
mean keep
let begin seem
help talk turn
start
show hear
play run move
like live believe hold
bring
happen
write sit stand

There’s a spark between your lips, and it lights mine
when we kiss— we’re a match: fighting against all
the ways we’ve tried to smother what we feel.
As the sun cuts through me, kissing my skin in
gold— but my tears taste like wine, and my hopes
lounge in the soft armchairs of dreams.

Now, I hate the silence when I’m left with myself—
scrolling through ghosts in my phone, each message
once charging me like a battery cell.

Now it’s just me, trapped in a cold heart's prison cell,
echoing for company, thinking of the days I was once
drowning  in a well. But all there’s left to say is a bitter,
shrugged,

                “Oh well.”

Dear IS,

Is it fair you hold the key to my drive— to make something, yet
make it too frightening to try? Your breath pretends to drift slow
in my ear, but beneath it, you’re clearing the field, planting seeds
of every fear you know will take root.

Is it the power lines I see wired from me to you— feeding your
hands as you siphon my strength, splitting my will from the things
I keep tucked deep in the vault of myself? As you arrange them like
weapons, calling each by name to remind me of the parts I’ve tried
to love but sometimes can’t.

Is it the way I urge, wish, and will to act— only for you to spool film
from my past, running old scenes like warnings until my courage
caves to your script? Your message is seen: as nothing moves unless
you approve.

Is that you, who rests on my chest like a stone, chastising, shrinking
me to the size of my doubts— small flaws made giant, slippery
floors of thought that tilt more than they ever should? Well… not
anymore. You don’t get to rule me, or write my rules.

Goodbye, Insecurity—as if I could ever feel secure in you.

Yours,
faithfully unfaithful,

Ex-companion.

Thoughts on dotted lines – this is my right to write; stepping
into deep conversations just to say I had a shoe in. Maybe in
a thousand days draped in gold & silver, I’ll praise God again –
but do it a third time even when life feels like bronze, because
hubris slips in easy. So humour me this: as humility’s hands
still smudged in ***** pictures, like the past we pretend was
never framed.

To picture life outside the struggles that have stained your
heart, aiming for the middle of it all like a game of darts;
darting away from the past but also seeing red sometimes,
taking each hit with the sight of a bull’s eye: just another
reminder of the battles I’ve already fought.

And for the worth I am – more grand than the grand I would
have earned – the days still erupted like volcanoes, molten
interruptions to the places I didn’t belong. I bottled myself up
until I popped like soda, spilling lava into empty sentiments,
too deep to throw away, and too raw to leave behind.

Some moments do feel like *******, but life isn’t a game
with extra cute lives in a litter – but only pieces of ourselves
we shed like skin, littering the ground we walk on. And maybe
that’s how we breathe to live – by moving forward even with
bruised feet, never quite ready to admit defeat.