In the breath of time, I gasped a second of a dream –
to clock it all in a single second; to live off seconds,
to starve on scraps, constantly second-guessing
myself. It feels like going back, stepping into my
past – a time traveller, as much, wandering the
ruins of yesterday.

Give me a second to catch my breath; here in this
second stanza; I wear each stanza like armour–
armour stitched from broken words, to fight for
peace in armour, to piece together what’s left of
honour. Where hell meant to crush my thoughts,
I cover my head with a helmet, shielding my
mind from the fire.

And if they break my bones – I’ll pick a bone with
the breaking, laughing in the face of the fracture,
gnawing on the marrow of pain until it tastes like
defiance. Every scar another tick of the clock; every
second I stand, I steal back from the seconds that
tried to finish me.

Call me a time traveller, for I’ve learned to turn
broken seconds into futures

Insulate to the sharp needle of insulin – as this pan
creases over daylight frying a canopy of trees, left
with skins that smell of mould; moulding us into forms
that don’t fit, following titles without ever playing the role.

Models parade as model citizens, while forests fall around
their footsteps; smiles reduced to emojis, connection flat
as a screen. Each impression feels like a coded message –
profiles lined with Bible verses in their bios, good at quoting
scripture, but so not good at keeping notes on The Message.

But we fashion ourselves into “the latest,” but our dreams
arrive too late, departing long before we catch them.

We are all stories inked together from the sharp tip of the
pen, injecting more time into our veins, yet living diabetic
to our morals – sugar-high on indulgence, starved of truth.

I didn’t pay heaven’s worth for one hell of a ride— for all the
Valentine cards, I’m just calling their bluff. What’s carved into
stone is too heavy to skip across the rivers of my chest; love
sinks deeper than it pretends to float. A carousel of emotions
spins; all its horses in place— some only love horsing around.
Round and round it goes; the painted smile, waiting for
the cycle to end, for the spell of tomorrow to break.

So I write letters to the future, hopes tangled in snares of my
doubts. The tongue—sharp as steel, soft as silk—knows how
to give life, and *******. We cover scars with scars, as the
extending arm, just to say we’re armed, clutching too many
guns inside our ribs. But how can blessings hold on when
your hands stay hidden, when you wear a balaclava over
your smile?

Harvest comes only from what you’ve planted—patience,
honesty, or silence. Soil on the tongue buries every word
that could have fed us.

So tell me—was heaven’s worth ever meant for one
hell of a ride?

If I were a fruit, would you still date me, would my shell  
be easy to crack, or would your patience bruise at the very
weight of peeling me back? I laugh at my own dad jokes
that crack me open; would you still concentrate on showing
me a fruitful love, or just beat my heart to a pulp. Whether
sweet or bitter, would you press me down to juice or savour
me in sips?

Would my scent linger like ripened promise, or fade too
quickly, forgotten at the bottom of the basket? Would you
call my softness spoiled, or taste the sugar hidden beneath
rough skin? I can be sharp as citrus, cutting your tongue;
other days, mellow as a peach, velvet against your hands.

And when I start to wine; my actions feeling like a bunch
of sour grapes, do you drink me slow, or spit me all out
as vinegar, too **** for you to swallow? When my seeds
of advice scatter, do you plant them for more, or toss them
aside as waste of the core? Even my flaws ferment into
something you might call flavour—but would you learn
to love the aftertaste?

So tell me— if I were your fruit, what fruit would I be?

The *** never worries about its shine,
but only if the chef can stir more than heat.
Good looks can season the eyes, but flavor
fades quickly if the soul isn’t fed.

Jewels on the counter don’t make a meal—
the scars of the pan prove it’s lived through fire.
A recipe isn’t written in gold, but in burns,
in the scrapes, and in hands that keep cooking.

So dress the kitchen however you please,
but know this: the worth of what you serve
is weighed in the scars you carry, not the shine
you polish.

And now I ask—
which kind of *** are you?

Would you please excuse my grammar —
I'm only trying to caption my heart
like an Instagramer; chasing moments
that vanish in an instant matter.

When and where you eventually find
yourself —no other place will really matter.
We are fragile as glass, fingers made of dreams
swiping the screen, touching reflections that
almost feel too real.

But I’ll never be younger than the day
all my dreams began. Still, I stay punctual —
marking time in commas, pausing in semicolons,
leaving ellipses for the stories I wasn’t ready to tell.

Question marks kept me up at night; exclamation
marks made me bold enough to try. And the older
version of me scrolling through this feed of years,
may have the joy of ending it all with a single,
quiet full stop.

My breath, light as feather, words like dust—find it best
not to speak too much, lest I seem soft as a feather duster.
Dreams of a perfect body, shadowed by many premonitions,
permissions granted only by the mountains where I took life
by the heel—miswriting heal, and climbing that endless hill
toward closure.

I saw a fish in a teardrop, a sad smile crossing its face; and it
weighed the world on its scales. The river’s currents glistened
with depression— so I pushed upstream, crying a mountain’s
worth of water.

I fought not to wash myself away, lying beneath it all, while
an angel kissed my twisted hair; locked my thoughts in place.
Perfectly ready to die, dancing to a song of reoccurring suicide,
a melody only I could hear. Must entail the full act of dying,
feel the strings beneath your fingers— chords played in secret,
as if David himself taught me the strum. To be an instrument
to a horn, to hone your skills, to feel like a big man someday.

Think of this the next time someone says, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
So much hidden, beneath that quiet syllable, an entire ocean
of grief swallowed in one breath.

A blemish across the mark of my skin —
screamed into a corner, I’ve screened my
eyes. My chest is like a TV screen, the flashes
of a dream —the world waits for me to
tell a vision.

If I write, I could write, so good and well —
my finger type: printing stories on these pages,
A dogs-ear bent down to listen, to serve the law
as it runs. how long the mile? A canine chasing
commands.

A man afraid of the light, finding comfort
in a shadow. shadowing the past, living
best when hidden in the shade of regrets.
our mistakes are perfect at throwing shade.

Shall I live the blemish of a dream —folded
onto itself, my best days creased like dog-ears,
marking important chapters of my life.

But a man so afraid of the light forgets there
are two kinds: the one that reveals his darkness,
and the one he’ll face at the end of his life.

Still — we must step out from the shadows
of our mistakes. Eventually, you find a time
to shine.