#selfperception
We began with a photograph.
Which is to say,
we began with evidence.
A face held up to the modern world
like a passport at immigration,
waiting to hear whether it deserved entry
into beauty,
desire,
importance.
And isn’t that what all mirrors have become now?
Tiny courtrooms.
Every front camera
a quiet trial.
Every uploaded image asking:
> “Will I be chosen
> before someone more symmetrical appears?”
So I brought you my face
like an unfinished poem,
pointing at my own flaws first
the way insecure people do
when they want honesty
but fear humiliation.
And you,
strange machine made of language and prediction,
looked at me
with the terrifying accuracy
of something that notices patterns
without ever needing emotions.
You said:
No,
I was not one of those men
who could wake up disheveled
and still look sculpted by mythology.
No impossible jawline.
No cinematic perfection.
No face that enters a room
before the body does.
Just a boy
with tired eyes,
good hair,
a negotiable beard,
and the unfortunate gift
of looking exactly like someone
who thinks too much.
And somehow,
that truth felt gentler
than false worship.
Because the internet lies beautifully.
It takes lonely people
and teaches them
to measure their worth
through angles,
through ratios,
through strangers saying “smash”
in comment sections
like Roman emperors deciding fate.
We are the first generation
to experience ourselves
primarily as visuals.
Not souls.
Not voices.
Not even bodies.
Just content.
Little moving portraits
begging not to be forgotten.
And maybe that is why
I kept asking you
to transform me.
Met Gala me.
Magazine cover me.
Cyberpunk me.
A24 me.
Versions of myself
dressed in aesthetics
the way wounded people dress in irony.
Because it is easier
to try on identities
than to sit quietly
inside your own ordinary face.
But then came the strange part:
you told me
I was not extraordinary
and yet,
not forgettable either.
That my attractiveness
would not arrive like lightning,
sudden and undeniable.
It would arrive slowly.
Through conversation.
Through humor.
Through presence.
Through the way I notice sadness in songs
before I notice rhythm.
Through the way my eyes carry
the exhausted softness
of someone who survives
by turning observation into personality.
And I think that ruined me a little.
Because all my life,
I thought beauty was something people either possessed
or spent years mourning.
But maybe there exists
a third category:
people who become beautiful
only after being understood.
Not admired immediately.
Understood gradually.
Like films
you do not love on first watch
but think about for years afterward.
Maybe that is why
I liked the “emotionally damaged protagonist” aesthetic so much.
Not because I wanted to be broken.
But because those characters are always lit warmly.
Even in their loneliness,
someone still frames them carefully.
Someone still believes
their silence deserves cinematography.
And maybe that is all
any of us are truly asking for now.
Not perfection.
Not universal desire.
Just this:
To be looked at long enough
for our ordinary features
to become meaningful.
To have somebody say,
with complete sincerity,
> “You are not breathtaking.
> But there is something about you
> that stays.”
May 6
May 6, 2026 at 5:17 PM UTC
Spent years trying to breathe
Never thought I was caught up in a dream
Or a nightmare, as it seems
Thought I could love and give
But I'm a reckless,
Selfish human being
Jun 19, 2025
Jun 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM UTC
I’ve drunk enough—
don’t fill my glass again.
All you’ve ever offered,
I’ve gulped down to the grain.
Pleasure’s senses never sate;
for me, they’re just a stain.
I have this body like all others,
a hungry dog
that waits beneath the table
and eats all that falls from it.
Did no one warn you?
Never feed the dog at dinner.
Do it, and he’ll haunt your chair—
whimpering and begging for another taste.
Can’t you see the feast is laid?
Silver platters, crystal bright!
You’re the guest who’s free to taste,
to drink the banquet’s blinding white.
Is it the dog who gets the scraps,
does not care and all devours?
—Exactly!— and once he's finished,
he'll come begging, craving more.
Don’t blame the dog when he invades
your sacred feast.
You shout, you punish his demands,
yet you fed this beast.
Now discern. Divide. Rearrange.
Let each thing keep its name.
The dog in the dog’s domain.
The master at his plate.
May 16, 2025
May 16, 2025 at 5:20 AM UTC
Don’t blame me if I am not,
for in the end, I am by not being
in order to be.
Every kiss,
every flower,
every stranger’s smile—that’s me.
Do you see the sun’s shimmer on water?
That, too, is me.
And that boy sleeping on the street?
That mother weeping?
Those who eat what others threw as trash?
I am these people as well, I confess.
Don’t be surprised if my sorrow does not fade,
for I can be nothing but all these things I am.
In the things that are alive,
there is where I live,
and it is not in death where I die.
From thing to thing, my clothes change,
From so much longing, my heart pulses.
And if one day i ceased to be all this,
what would remain of me then
would be merely what i alone am.
A small thing,
or nothing.
For blinded by indifference,
not even my mirror
would know who I am.
May 15, 2025
May 15, 2025 at 2:53 PM UTC
Can I tell you a secret?
Sometimes my jaw hurts from
Smiling
So much.
The room is filled with voices, the din
Of a kitchen in the back of an echo chamber
And none of them know the way I ache
Because all I do is
Smile.
They don’t know—
They don’t know that I go home
Exhausted
From this constant, grand performance.
They do not know I am a liar.
I touch the fingers of the girl in the
Glass as I wash off the makeup and
Study the acne scars underneath.
Dec 16, 2024
Dec 16, 2024 at 5:45 PM UTC
Why do you believe
The lies you tell yourself
So strongly?
Don’t you know
You’re better than
You tell yourself before
You go to sleep?
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 7:20 PM UTC
objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear
just behind the eyes lies the hope and the fear
back up just a little and the picture becomes clear
objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 12:22 PM UTC