Still
hanging in the frame of mind
if you will
practice with me, that would be so kind
does it seem better not to care?
More sane, more in-touch?
Or is it okay to get attached,
even if you sometimes care too much?

Quilted tales
square by square are marching away
leaving the stuffing pale
without skin to contain its clouds
tomorrow blends with yesterday
"disobey" drifts into "allowed"
when there is blue, it scales to grey
a comfortable taste of the trap-home-place
nullified whimpers of passion and all there was to say
it's not so bad once you learn to sit and stay

Wrap the ocean in a bottle
and pour the cool liquid down your throat
tilt the cradle of stillborn hope and let it rock
with the wind to carry it a few times more
turn your back and walk away,
there are no cries, no creaks to draw you back from the door
do not pretend to perceive a portend and retread the same path as before
these are your first steps on land, are you already drowning on the shore?

a thought that’s been consuming me as of late is of my imagination,
or lack thereof. i resent the void that has become my brain for swallowing you whole. i resent the way that it has turned you into nothing more than a memory. i want you to feel real when you’re not by my side. i want to be able to believe that you’re not just a figment of my imagination
when you’re not holding me close. i miss the feeling of your arms around my shoulders, so i substitute your warm with the lining of my duvet. it’s a weak substitute and nothing compared to how the weight of your arm feelings against mine. but if i try hard enough, i can almost convince myself that you are constructed of fibres, linen and cotton, and smell like my house. it’s the best that i can conjure and i loathe myself for that. i can’t remember what colour your eyes are, or how they look when they’re looking at me. how your pupils dilate when they interlock with mine. this has become the root of my sadness. what if one day i can’t even remember the shape of your face? or the contours of your cheekbones and how they feel against mine, when you can simulate mine so perfectly? what about the day when i forget how your hand feels in mine?
it feels like dying. only worse. because i’m petrified that one day i will exist in your mind and i won’t even be able to remember how it felt, when you held me close and made me feel something. i never want to forget this. i'm afraid of not being able to recall what you smell like and one day forgetting how you say my name.
it hurts that you can simulate me so perfectly, when i can’t even attempt the same.

Love, the quietest volume tome in this apocrypha

dysphagia, a fantasy of crossing seas to see

a phantasm in fantasia, met with aphantasia

stolen from the mouths of babes, dysphasia

on deaf ears, aphasia, blind eyes, dysphoria, America

distribute misplaced distrust, fairness it's just injust

inform the infirm of interim canned worms within

the mind's eye, boring huh?

Lustful fire, borne into the, **** of discontent

this continent of opinionated, belated, celebrated

hated, content, resentment, revolution, civil discussion

and civil war, fare is fair if justice is injust just rain flaming corpses from your blimp *****

deflate your egos, throw out the discus, go and fetch the dogs some biscuits

**** everything, reclaim nativity for the crackers, ingenuity, ennui in ***** revenue reviews, incoming claims of independency

choke on your proclaimed declarations, a serpent's scale tipping your throat closed in silence in privacy

in support of engineering a wedge split Twain the ***** Joe-ked about between history and heresy

them old cats crow the same song Jim heard crow, a length of rope to hang yourself and go free

die you Tyrannical Oedipus Rex, die *******, die

long reign supreme anarchy

long reign supreme equality

the only true moral equation to solve human error will always be open-air savagery

that's just the show the stage is set for the world to see.

It was nothing but a thought. Nothing but a flicker in my mind, like a light switch, flicked off before the bulb was given time to illuminate itself. Like a tiny seed kicked out of the dirt before it had the chance to stop it. It was nothing. Nothing at all.
I thanked them for the compliment and decided to forget about it.
That should’ve been the end of it.
But it seems as though the seed was more persistent than id thought. Than I hoped. The light bulb lit the room. What if they didnt mean it? but no…if they hadn’t meant it, why waste their breath? Of course they meant it. Of course they did.
That should’ve been the end of it.
But the seed had latched onto the lack of my mind, its roots infecting my thoughts, carrying deoxygenated blood through its veins, stealing the bright red counterpart my arteries carried. But it wasn’t unbearable. Nothing that needed changing. It could live in the back of my mind, growing among the billions of other thoughts. If it grew dangerous, it would only take a garden weeder to pluck it out. The light switch could be flicked off in an instant.
But weeds are not demanding, as other plants are. They do not refuse to grow if provided with too little space, or the wrong time of year, or if neglected. And as such the sapling spread, climbing along the vines of electrochemical reactions, infecting my perfect garden. The pulsing roots of red and blue overran the greenery that once was scattered along the floor. They didn’t mean it. No one ever means it. how could you ever think they meant it? And just as insults are so often disregarded, compliments became nothing but words. The lightbulb burst.
They began growing leaves, and dandelions sprouted from the once bare stems. This wasn’t so bad. What were people talking about, “unhealthy way of thinking?” Such beautiful flowers were flourishing in my head, surely their gardens would cower in shame at the sight of the canopy of leaves my thoughts grew. The electricity in the bulb sparked. the fire was so warm. I knew there was nothing wrong with the thoughts.
The foliage spread to my imagination, and aphantasia seemed to have defeated my mind’s eye, with no image ever seeming picturesque anymore. the fire grew and spread, burning through the sticks on the ground, leaving nothing but black and white snow-like ash behind it. What was the point imagining things that weren’t even true? Like thinking they meant what they said.
The flowers started to shrivel and their ligules ran away with the wind. The leaves wilted into grey-brown corpses, empty shells of what they once were. My garden - where did it go? My thoughts, why do they look so dead? Why is my mind so empty? So full…of nothing? Why is tinnitus the only tone being whispered in my ears?
I crawled through the forrest that was my brain, stiller than the sky at night. Where had the flowers gone? where was the flicker of light? I swore it could live forever…why am I alone now?