Another day—  
heads down, no one meets my gaze.  
Fingertips glow blue from too-bright screens,  
thumbs moving faster than thought.

We’ve replaced eye contact  
with read receipts.  
Affection  
with filtered selfies  
and half-typed replies.

I haunt timelines  
that never notice.  
Scroll through memories  
we never made  
but somehow still miss.

Every ping  
feels like hope—  
every silence  
a knife with a quiet ringtone.

I try to speak,  
but my voice autocorrects  
to nothing.

We are present,  
but not here.  
Together,  
but only in algorithm.

And even then—  
you don’t see me.  
Just another  
digital ghost  
you once knew.

"Hey doc, I came in feeling kind of strange..."

My thoughts skip  
like scratched discs—  
looping refrains  
I don’t remember writing.  
Someone moved the furniture  
inside my mind.

Eyes follow  
that aren’t there.  
Or are.  
They blink  
just after I do.

I’ve started measuring silence  
between footsteps  
I didn’t take.  
Mirrors hesitate now—  
they show me,  
but too slowly.  
Like they’re checking  
who I’ll be this time.

Every word I say  
feels recorded.  
Every truth I try to speak  
static-warped,  
time-delayed.

It’s not fear  
if it turns out real, right?

The walls are breathing  
or maybe I am.  
Hard to tell anymore.  
Even time flinches  
when I look at it wrong.

If this is normal,  
I need a new diagnosis.

Why do I even bother anymore.  
This ache’s been hiding beneath sweet veneers,  
a bitterness that won’t dissolve.  
It clings—  
festering near the heart,  
sinking into my veins  
like it belongs there.

Thoughts spiral,  
spliced with voices  
that tangle and echo until  
I can’t feel the edges of what’s real.  
I linger too long in fractured reflections,  
where clarity used to live.

The air’s thick—  
it steals my voice  
before I even speak.  
I’m fading from the foreground,  
becoming background noise  
in a world that doesn’t blink.

Everything stares back  
with blank expressions  
and unfamiliar eyes.

Pulse frozen—  
iced veins mid-break,  
brain flooding with fragments  
of fractured light and wired noise.

Every color comes too loud.  
Every breath enters sharp-edged.  
The sky is too close.  
The floor doesn’t hold.

I stagger through a maze  
built of memory and migraine—  
walls shift shape  
each time I blink.

I am too many signals,  
too little pattern.  
A scream poised  
inside a prism.

Please—  
just one thought  
that doesn’t bloom sideways.

Just one silence  
that doesn’t shimmer wrong.

Forgotten in this echo-tight scream,  
where the air won’t carry sound  
and even grief arrives delayed.  
I tried to write my way out of it—  
but the ink dried mid-thought,  
froze inside the pen  
before it could name the wound.

My voice fossilized in the marrow  
of some unspoken ache.  
Not buried—  
just shelved in a room  
no one visits anymore.

You call it stillness.  
I call it sediment.

I trace old outlines  
like memory’s archaeologist—  
dusting off fragments  
that never fit  
but refuse to leave.

Each word weighs more than it used to.  
Each silence—  
louder than breath.

My heart stopped beating, but am still breathing.
Drink in my hand , but it's not healing.
You tore it out, left me on empty.
Dead inside , but my lungs keep working.
Pour another shot just to feel alive.
Every night the silence keeps me locked in this ache.
Say it's over , but your name still on the screen.
Face on replay in my mind like a ***** routine.
Tired to smoke out the pain, tried to drown out your sound.
All these faces in the crowd, but it's you I still can't drown.
I'm still alive but you took the best of me.
Left my ribs wide open where my heart used to be.
Should I text , should I call ?
Hit delete, disappear.
But you're everywhere I look when the morning comes near.
You were my everything, now am losing my mind .
Can't run from you , can't leave you behind.
Look what you made me, now I can't feel.
My heart stopped beating, but am still breathing.
Drink in my hand , but it's not healing.
You tore it out, left me on empty.
Dead inside , but my lungs keep working.
I see myself from the outside.
Hands shaking, cold, staring down another glass (so cold).
Used to want tomorrow, now I barely want tonight.
Told myself I'd let you go, but I still can't ask. Why'd you break me like that?
My heart stopped beating, but am still breathing.
Drink in my hand , but it's not healing.
You tore it out, left me on empty.
Dead inside , but my lungs keep working.
Still here, still breathing.
But I don't feel a thing.

Title: Out of the Reliquary of Broken Self

I forgot the shape of my name  
but not the ache it left in my mouth.  

Memory fractured.  
Flight stitched from ash.  
Still, I flew.