Day after day, we go through the motions
Like waves searching for shore in the middle of the ocean,
Following along as we get swept by the current
Again and again, waiting for the day it’ll end.

I was lost in this sea of people when I saw him.
A mere glimpse from my periphery, I almost missed
His tear-streaked face and his bleeding knee,
And I thought to myself, how did I not see?

My eyes caught the way his shoulders sagged
From carrying the weight of the world on his back.
He’s only a child but his fate seemed worse than Atlas,
His young body shackled by greedy insatiable hands.

I wonder if someone witnessed his despair,
Picked up a brush and decided to share
The story of a boy whose future was stolen
By heroes who were nothing but villains.

His pleas echo in every brushstroke
And while my hands can never replicate
The vivid imagery offered by paint
He can live on in the words I create.

i wonder if you still remember
the time when i wrote you a poem
in the middle of a noisy lunch hour crowd
a small table on the second floor
of the local mcdonald's.

i used to smile when i thought about it,
the days when i felt alone in a room of forty.
when i sat with people who i thought were friends
but were just as plastic
as the lunch tables we ate on.

back then, i clung to that memory
until my hands bruised and my wrists bled.
the scraps of poetry already slipped my mind
but not the pair of headphones we shared
nor the secrets we kept.

every now and then, i think about it,
a wave of soul-crushing emptiness washes over me.
i wonder how you are and how you feel,
but just like us, the fleeting thought
fades away into oblivion.

we lost touch over the years,
but i wish i didn't lose you.

The walls were caving in, and he couldn’t breathe,
The fog was too thick, and the monsters out free,
He couldn’t go back, not when people don’t believe
The things he’s been through, and the things he’s seen.

He was shackled by the weight of what he couldn’t understand,
His bones straining at the sorrow he held upon his hands,
And so he wrote the naked truth on the expanse of his flesh,
The ink he used, his own bloodshed.

But the myth of Atlas was never engraved in scars,
Nor were Van Gogh’s masterpieces a product of falling apart.
Still, their struggles became the trophies of society,
As if antlers of a prized animal displayed in full glory.

every night, i look up at the sky,
hoping, praying, for the stars to align.
every night, they look back at me,
their dying light, a shrouded mystery.

the skin i wear does not feel the same,
yet your touch still lingers, still stays.
i want to claw my skin out until it bleeds.
maybe then, you would finally leave.