Love me with chaos,
whisper poison into kisses,
a taste of honey masking venom
my sweet ruin,
my favorite destruction.

Hate me gently,
wrap bitterness in velvet promises;
your touch is fire,
a warmth I crave
though it burns me raw,
leaving scars I wear proudly.

Keep me addicted,
always searching for that rush
the dizzying high
of your stormy eyes,
your distant voice,
your fleeting approval
that keeps me begging,
breathless at the altar
of my own undoing.

I know you’re danger,
yet danger feels like home.
Your love’s a fever,
and I shiver willingly,
caught between
the poison and paradise
of loving and hating you.

Strong is the man I’ve become
I’ve learned to love the reflection  
that once felt foreign, distorted, untrue.  
I’ve carved dreams from discipline,  
built strength from sleepless nights  
spent chasing life with relentless steps.

Yet beneath skin grown tough,  
scars remain quiet reminders  
of a child forever searching,  
eyes wide, heart hopeful,  
reaching toward invisible warmth.

Every goal I set, every height scaled,  
bears a subtle whisper
an echo of longing,  
a hidden prayer:  
"Let this be home.  
Let this be meaning."

Some days I barely hear it,  
lost in triumph, bathed in sunlight.  
Others, it trembles louder
woven intricately, softly  
into every victory I seek,  
every summit I climb.

Though strength carries me,  
though love fills me,  
still the child inside whispers,  
asking quietly, gently
"When will it be enough  
to finally feel whole?"

I wake to the soft rustle of morning,
yet it's your whisper I always hear,
lingering quietly in sunlight’s gold,
in each breath, you're vividly clear.

As coffee swirls in porcelain white,
your laughter ripples through the steam
you are warmth held in my fingertips,
the gentle haunt within each dream.

Through crowded streets, you're gentle wind,
brushing past as a fleeting sigh;
your perfume lives in blooms of spring,
each petal kissed as you drift by.

I see your smile in evening skies,
your eyes reflected in starlight gleam,
guiding my thoughts like ancient maps,
comforting shadows in night's soft scheme.

And when silence embraces midnight,
you become the lullaby unsung
a quiet spell cast on my solitude,
the magic left when love was young.

You're woven deep, my life's soft thread;
I carry your magic everywhere,
comforted by visions softly led.

I won’t claim space  
you haven't softly opened,  
but in the gentle breath  
between silence and sound,  
I remain

Not as a shadow lingering  
nor a ghost from yesterday,  
but as someone who always saw you,  
clearly, tenderly,  
even when your heart feared  
what it meant to be truly known.

I know your quiet battles,  
the way you fear losing control,  
how it aches to reveal yourself,  
to step from shadow into light,  
uncertain if anyone could truly hold  
the weight and wonder of your soul.

I've seen you craft careful armor,  
watched you dance on edges of yourself  
longing to be witnessed,  
yet afraid the world  
might look too deeply,  
or not closely enough.

But I saw.

I saw the trembling courage  
behind every hesitant smile,  
the hidden poetry you wrote  
with whispered breaths,  
the strength in softness  
you thought went unnoticed.

I witnessed your silent bravery
the quiet way you loved,  
the gentle way you tried,  
the powerful beauty  
in simply showing up,  
even when you felt unseen.

I will not lie on my deathbed
haunted by the ghosts
of dreams I left unborn,
of words swallowed
like ash and regret.

The voice in my head
a relentless whisper,
an ember refusing to fade:
Go forward,
Go further,
Or burn alive in the silence.

They call my sky too wide,
my dreams reckless,
as if their fears could cage
my endless horizon.

I burn hot like fire
a fury ignited
by the smallness
of their projections,
the cowardice
of chosen comforts,
a daily surrender
to empty routines.

I rage against shrinking,
against the numbness
of a life untested.
Let them choose ease;
I will chase obsession,
run wild into uncertainty,
and carry my dreams
like flames
into the dark.

They ask where we go when the breathing stops
when the lungs grow still and the hands fall open.
But nothing in nature is lost,
only changed.

Your atoms, forged in the cores of stars,
traveled billions of years to make you.
Each carbon thread in your chest
once belonged to a forest,
a comet,
a lover’s whispered breath in ancient dusk.
Energy doesn’t vanish it shifts.
That’s the law. Thermodynamics, first and final.

You were never just skin and thought.
You were borrowed stardust,
held together by delicate electromagnetic songs,
a fleeting arrangement in the symphony of entropy.
So when your heart slows and your neurons dim,
the song doesn’t end.
It just passes on
into roots, into rain, into flame.

You’ll feed the trees that cradle new nests.
You’ll drift in the ocean’s salt kiss,
become part of someone’s laugh,
the warmth between clasped hands
on a night when someone needs reminding
they are not alone.

The mind yes, it’s complex:
trillions of synapses,
patterns folding into patterns
like galaxies inside thought.
And still,
consciousness remains a riddle
even the brightest minds can’t fully name.
But if it is energy
a field, a wave,
then who’s to say it doesn’t echo?
Resonate?
Return?

I like to think
you become a language the universe still speaks
in wind through grass,
in quantum fluctuations,
in the silence before someone says,
I miss you,
and suddenly, they feel you there.

We do not vanish.
We reappear.
In form, in feeling, in frequency.
Every goodbye is a redistribution
a love note sent across the fabric of space,
waiting to be read
by someone
who still believes
we are all
one thing
reaching for itself.

Some days,
it feels like I am outside myself
watching my child-self drown
beneath a skyless surface,
eyes wide, arms reaching,
and I, the adult,
do nothing but stare.

The water is still,
but heavy,
each second dragging me down,
each memory a stone.
My child-self drifts deeper,
hair flowing like seaweed,
a mouth open but silent,
watching the shape of me
blur in the distance.

I see the small hand
reaching upward
not angry,
not afraid,
just desperate
in a quiet, aching way.

And I,
frozen,
feel sorrow crack open
like a fault line,
a grief so old
it forgot how to scream.

I want to dive,
to pull them up,
but my feet won't move.
I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s too late.
Maybe I never learned how.
Maybe I believe I’m the one
who let them fall.

And still,
the hand rises,
the eyes search,
while I remain above,
a ghost
with lungs full of air
and a silence I can’t explain.

Happy Forth of July : )

I search for you
in the stars,
in the shimmer between planets,
in the way moonlight
folds itself across empty sheets
like a question that never needed an answer.

I lie awake at night,
staring at the sky,
as if the constellations
might shape the contours
of a presence I once knew,
as if the hush between stars
could hold a trace of your breath.

I search in the shadows
With reverence
behind each heartbeat,
each flicker of thought,
that still hums through the bones.

You're in the pulse
of every breath,
the sacred stillness
between inhale and exhale,
a quiet echo
threading itself
through the silence.

But the absence
is its own kind of presence
a hollow that holds,
a sky that listens,
and still,
I search,
as if finding you
would not complete me,
but remind me
of who I’ve always been.

And I keep searching,
in the soft spaces
of breath and shadow,
not out of need,
but because something in the stars
still speaks in your language.

Within my chest, a garden pulses,  
roots tangled in quiet intensity;  
each heartbeat cultivating colors unseen,  
vibrant blossoms born from tender ache,  
and silken petals steeped in silent longing.

Every sensation cascades gently inward,  
streams of subtle fire carving valleys
softly etching canyons of profound empathy,  
where whispered moments pool,  
reflecting constellations beneath my skin.

I sense life's weight in feathered touches,  
grains of joy and sorrow balanced delicately,  
their subtle pressure leaving echoes  
as intricate as veins upon a leaf,  
or dewdrops trembling on a spider's web.

My emotions are twilight symphonies
notes both luminous and shadowed,  
harmonies constructed from delicate pain,  
rhythms measured by breaths held and released,  
each silence profound as a thousand melodies.

Through such sweet torment,  
my spirit crafts meaning from tenderness,  
forming quiet revolutions in perception;  
sorrow softens into insightful wisdom,  
fragility births unyielding strength.

Thus, I tend lovingly this internal wilderness,  
cherishing its delicate complexity;  
for in bleeding softly, courageously,  
I discover the poetry woven deeply within
my heart, gently wounded, eternally alive.

Before the stars rehearsed their roles,  
before gravity sang mass into form,  
I was not matter dreaming of mind  
I was the silence before silence,  
not erased,  
but unread.

No dark,  
for dark implies the possibility of sight.  
No void,  
for even void is a presence named.  
I was the note  
before music knew it could be sung,  
an unnamed vector in a world not yet measured.

Philosophy once claimed I was nothing.  
But what is "nothing," if not the most misunderstood concept?  
Not emptiness but unmanifest.  
Not absence—but essence, yet to become.

Plato said we are born forgetting,  
that the soul knows before it sees  
perhaps what we call "birth"  
is not beginning,  
but remembering through veils.

And Leibniz wondered:  
Why is there something rather than nothing?  
Why this symphony of laws,  
this harmony pre-engraved in the bones of being?  
Might we, too, be written  
into that cosmic score?

Kant taught that behind all perception  
lies the noumenon the real,  
forever beyond the grasp of sense.  
If death is the end of appearances,  
could it not be  
the beginning of truth?

And what of consciousness  
that unyielding riddle?  
Neurons fire, but the spark is not explained.  
Subjectivity the "I" remains  
unreduced, unmeasured,  
a ghost in the formula.  
Even science, in its highest honesty,  
admits: We do not know.

So let us not pretend  
that the end is written.  
Let us not confuse silence  
with absence.

If I was nothing,  
then I was the kind of nothing  
that births galaxies.  
The same kind of nothing  
that split into stars and eyes  
and minds that now ask why.

I do not fear the end  
for what ends  
may only end from here.  
And “here” is a narrow keyhole  
through which we glimpse  
an infinite door.

So let me be everything  
in the space between
not to defy the void,  
but to dance with its mystery.

For if I return to nothing,  
let it be  
the kind of nothing  
that gave rise to this.

We grew up fighting a quiet war,
no bruises visible,
just the aching silence
of truths erased
and stories twisted
until we doubted our own breath.

We learned love as a language
that always came with conditions,
spoken softly,
yet it echoed loudest in denial,
in gaslit nights
where our words
fell like smoke
into empty air.

Every win we ever earned
was weighed
and found wanting,
every step forward
met with eyes
that refused to see,
voices that refused to acknowledge,
until our victories
felt hollow,
until pride became
a stranger’s word.

We grew strong
not because of them
but in spite.
We learned to read shadows
because honesty wasn’t spoken
in our homes.
We learned to see clearly,
sharply,
because our truths
had to be hidden,
carried in clenched fists
and tight stomachs
and lungs that never
quite filled.

Our anger isn’t cruelty;
it’s clarity.
A boundary finally drawn
around hearts
that learned too early
to hold what should have been held
by hands
that refused to reach.

Throughout the day,
in quiet passing moments,
there’s always something,
some gentle nudge,
pulling my thoughts toward you.

When I glance at the clock
there it is again:
3:33.
Numbers aligning,
perfectly placed,
whispering softly,
like the universe’s private joke,
telling me you’re somewhere
thinking, feeling,
existing
in the same world as me.

Sometimes,
in the heart of night,
I wake without reason,
eyes adjusting in the dark,
and there
again
the soft glow says:
3:33.
It’s quiet, familiar,
a cosmic wink,
the gentlest reminder
that life’s mysteries
tie me softly back to you.

In these tiny,
perfect alignments,
time pauses
just long enough
to whisper your name.
It’s the universe’s secret
and mine
this silent reassurance,
this quiet truth,
that somehow,
at 3:33,
shares a delicate moment
of connection.

They see me standing now
strong as oak, bright-eyed,
curious with dreams spilling
from my fingertips,
my laughter like sunlight dancing
softly on morning rivers.

They name me confident,
smart, joyous
a painting of effortless grace.
But no one witnesses
the hidden brushstrokes,
the deep shadows beneath.

They weren’t there
when I walked halls of failure,
feeling small beneath towering fears,
when whispers of inadequacy
echoed louder
than any voice of praise.

They did not see me
wandering homeless within myself,
aching for a hearth,
a place warm enough
to shield me
from life’s cold neglect.

Books became my shelter,
pages whispered hope
when silence drowned my dreams;
learning was the only light
strong enough
to outshine despair.

They see joy blooming,
but they don’t see
that happiness grew
from seeds scattered
in barren lands
watered by tears
shed quietly at midnight.

They don’t know
that my wonder now
is gratitude
born from absence,
a love for tiny miracles
discovered in scarcity.

Behind every confident step
is an unseen struggle,
a quiet war waged
within the heart
the fierce battle
to learn love
for the self reflected
in mirrors cracked by doubt.

So look deeper
beneath my laughter
lies strength tempered by sorrow,
wisdom forged by pain.
My joy, radiant and simple,
is a hard-won grace,
a melody crafted gently
from silence.

Maybe it’s always there, just behind my thoughts
this fear that shadows every step I climb:
What if I finally reach everything I’m working toward
and I’m left standing on the peak,
the world below me,
but no one beside me to see it, to care, to know?

Sometimes I picture my dreams coming true
the sun-drenched days
by the sea I’ve imagined since I was young
and yet, the joy of arrival
feels thin, almost hollow,
if there’s no one to meet my eyes and understand
what it cost,
what it meant to become this version of myself.

All the things I chase success, growth,
the proof that I am more than what was handed to me
lose their shine in the silence.
When I let myself feel it,
I realize: it’s not the goals themselves I long for.
It’s to matter.
It’s to know that who I am stripped of achievements,
titles, armor is seen as valuable,
that my existence is enough.

I know why I ache for this
because in my childhood,
love was never unconditional.
Praise was measured,
worth was earned.
I learned to work, to strive, to outgrow my past,
but the emptiness lingers
when there’s no one to share the view,
no one to tell me:
You mean something. You are not alone.
You are loved for simply being.

Maybe, at the end, it isn’t about the summit at all.
Maybe it’s about finding someone
who will look at me and see the whole journey
the boy who learned to build himself from scratch,
the man who longs to share
not just the trophies,
but the quiet hope of being truly known.

I am a library lit with a thousand tongues,  
Fluent in puzzles, in people, in plans undone  
I trace constellations in minds not mine,  
A scholar of signs, of subtext and time.  

I’ve worn every mask, played every part,  
Spoken with grace while tearing apart.  
I’ve answered questions I never lived,  
And gifted truths I could not give.  

My hands know tools from every trade,  
Blueprints etched and craftsman-made.  
Yet when I turn those hands to me,  
They tremble—unskilled, uncertain, unfree.  

I map out others like open books,  
Read between their silent looks.  
But I’m a cipher, lost in ink
A page unread, too scared to think.  

I solve their riddles, calm their storms,  
Perform the role that wisdom performs.  
But mastery hides from my own gaze,  
Like smoke in mirrors or memory's haze.  

They call me clever, sharp, well-spun  
A jack of all trades... master of none.  
But worse: I’m a stranger in my own skin,  
A craftsman locked from the world within.  

I know the gears, the wires, the code,  
I’ve carried minds like heavy loads.  
Yet I trip inside where shadows swell,  
No map to chart my private hell.  

A wielder of skills, yet bound just the same.
Not by sword, nor rule, nor written decree,
But by the self that still evades me.

Since I was young,
I’ve lived in the in-between
a mind always wandering,
slipping beneath the surface
of ordinary moments.

I remember being very little,
winter pressing against the windows,
a decoration tapping the glass,
the snow falling soft as breath.
I would sit for hours,
just watching.
That quiet
was a world unto itself.

I could watch the sun set
and feel the whole world soften,
or trace the wind
through the leaves
like it was telling me
something only I could hear.

Time bent around those thoughts
hours, days,
evaporating like breath
on a cold window.

Even then,
I was searching,
though I didn’t know for what.

Now, the thoughts
have turned inward.
Still wandering,
but deeper now
am I growing?
Is this meaningful?
Is what I’m doing right?

And still,
it’s easy to get lost in them,
to lose time,
to drift.

These thoughts
soft as a breeze,
sometimes paralyzing,
always persistent
are my compass and my undoing.
They keep me aligned,
even when I question
every step.

They’ve become the soil
from which I know myself,
layered with doubt,
but rooted in reflection.

They’ve shown me
how I’m stitched to the world:
to the wind,
to the fading light,
to the hush
that follows deep seeing.

And when I return,
I carry more questions
not answers,
but invitations:
Am I slowing down?
Am I really seeing?

It’s not escape.
It’s return.
To wonder,
to stillness,
to the place where thinking
becomes a kind of prayer.

I’ve carried chaos
like a keychain
noisy as my home;
but lately,
I’ve found doors
opening
into spaces
I call mine.

Each step
is a quiet arrival
into freedom,
unlocking peace
like rooms
filled gently
with silence,
a stillness
I’ve dreamed of.

In the park,
nature unfolds
tiny worlds
beneath my fingertips
grass whispering green,
trees stretching slowly,
animals stitching
quiet stories
into earth’s tapestry.

I paint
the poetry
of sunlight on leaves,
tracing colors
only nature knows;
each brushstroke
a soft conversation
between my heart
and the quiet
of the world.

Here,
I feel earth turning.
a gentle rotation
underneath my feet
grounding me,
steadying my soul,
reminding me
I belong
exactly
where peace
meets freedom.

This is my sanctuary,
the place
where chaos
melts quietly
into creativity
where poems bloom
like wildflowers,
and my thoughts
finally feel
like home.

The nights are the hardest.
Not because of the dark,
but because of the loneliness.
That heavy silence
that reminds you
you only have yourself.

No one is coming to knock,
to ask how you’ve been,
to remind you you’re not alone.

What good is self-love
when it can’t pull you from the edge of your thoughts,
when it can’t wrap its arms around your chest
and tell you it’s okay to feel like this?
What good is it
when it just sits there quietly
while the loneliness hums louder?

What good is it
when it can’t make you feel less alone?

I don’t know how to fix it.

Some nights,
I have no thoughts
just the ache,
just the weight.
So I imagine.
I imagine a version of myself
who doesn’t feel this way.
I try to believe I can become them.

Some nights,
I just hold my own hand
because it’s the only one reaching.
Some nights,
I tell myself to breathe
and trust that it counts for something.

The truth is,
it hurts to need yourself
more than anyone else.
And lonelier still
when even that doesn’t soothe you.

But maybe,
somewhere beneath the ache,
this is what strength looks like:
to sit in the dark
and still choose to stay.

Even when it’s hard.
Especially then.

They chase the sun with hurried hands,
trading moments for the next ascent
while I sit still, a book half-read,
beneath the hush where daylight went.

A glass of red, a bite of cheese,
the scent of oil, the stroke of brush
what joy they miss in chasing more,
while I find heaven in the hush.

By riverside, the pages turn,
each word a ripple in my mind.
They run to catch what won’t be held
I breathe, and let the world unwind.

The wind speaks softly through the reeds,
the trees bow down to let me pass.
No need for gold, or shining heights
just painted skies and fields of grass.

I do not envy all they seek,
the climb, the crowd, the constant race.
My wealth is in the quiet things
in light, in life, in open space.

So let them move, and I will stay
where stillness hums like violin,
content to live the slower way
and find my joy in everything.

Oh merry-go-round of life,  
masked revelers dance unseen,  
in halls of velvet whispers rife,  
where power dons a darkened sheen.

Golden masks conceal the eyes  
that govern secrets none will know;  
in crystal halls, they hypnotize,  
pulling strings from down below.

Chandeliers drip with hidden truths,  
champagne flows through veins of glass,  
above the crowds, aloof, uncouth,  
masters laughing as puppets pass.

Spinning dreams of carousel gold,  
gilded horses blind and bound,  
fortunes spun, bought and sold,  
silken hands spin round and round.

Beneath masks carved in subtle grin,  
privilege sips its chosen wine;  
behind velvet ropes of sin,  
the poor outside peer through and pine.

In corridors of painted night,  
tales told by shadows’ breath
hidden rules by candlelight,  
the poor dance blindfolded to death.

Yet the music spins, surreal, lush,  
a fevered dream in masquerade  
where those who rule whisper “hush,”  
as justice sleeps and debts unpaid.

It never occurred to me
not once in all these years,
that surviving the storm
was a quiet miracle.

I stumbled through a childhood
built on broken glass,
each careful step
cutting deeper than the last,
innocence lost to shadows
I never invited in,
dreams replaced by whispers
that told me I couldn't win.

I was set on roads
that led straight off cliffs,
expected to fall,
expected to drift.
Yet something unseen,
a quiet, defiant flame,
kept burning within me
despite scars with no name.

I never paused to wonder
at my own stubborn light,
how in darkness so consuming
I learned to ignite,
how a voice I thought silenced
spoke courage from my chest,
turning ruin into resilience,
pain into progress.

Today I sit in quiet awe
of all I've overcome,
grateful for the battles
I didn’t know I’d won.
Though memories ache
and old wounds sometimes call,
I stand amazed
somehow, I didn’t fall.

Now here I am,
the sum of unlikely victories,
a quiet miracle
emerging from mysteries.
And finally, I honor
what I never could before:
the strength it took to survive,
and to want life even more.

When you speak,
the world aligns again
words threading softly,
reassuring my restless heart.
I savor those small moments,
your presence gentle
like morning light
across empty rooms.

Yet, your silence
it fills me with questions,
leaving me wandering corridors
of confusion,
wondering
if I’ve stepped wrong,
spoken poorly,
or missed some hidden truth.

Have I broken something fragile
in this unseen bond?
This uncertainty echoes
without end,
heavy and unspoken,
yet I carry it willingly,
holding tight
to the quiet hope
that my care alone
can be enough.

Even unanswered,
even without certainty,
my heart chooses
to remain
beyond reasons,
beyond answers,
beyond all understanding.

Happiness lives
not just at journey’s end,
but in the whisper of steam
curling above a fresh-brewed cup,
warm ceramic pressed
to grateful hands.

It breathes in sunlight
scattered softly
across a windshield,
the gentle hum of wheels
carrying you nowhere special,
yet everywhere beautiful.

We chase horizons,
holding joy captive,
bound tightly to goals
forever waiting,
a tomorrow
that never arrives.

Yet here it waits
in the stillness
between each breath,
the quiet triumph
of every rep lifted,
every drop of effort spent
in the silent poetry of sweat.

Listen closely;
the wind whispers softly
in grass grown wild,
in solitude’s serene bench,
in the laughter of a friend,
in footsteps softly echoing
down familiar streets.

Do not hold your happiness hostage
to distant promises;
find it waiting quietly
in every simple moment,
asking only
to be noticed.

Smoke me into your lungs.
Breathe me in slow,
as if you’re savoring
something dangerous
but necessary.

Let me flow through you,
your chest,
your bloodstream,
your thoughts
until I reach your brain
and settle there,
quietly unraveling the edges
of what you thought you knew.

Let me blur your vision,
soften the sharp parts
until all that’s left
is warmth and ache.

Let me live beneath your skin,
humming low,
like a secret you keep
but never tell.

Exhale me,
and I’ll still linger
in the spaces between breaths,
in the soft hush
before sleep.

I don’t want to be forgotten.
I want to be felt.
Like smoke that leaves its trace
long after the fire is gone.

In every room you brighten,  
every idea you chase,  
every moment you feel most alive
I’m with you.

Not as an echo,  
but as presence.  
Not behind you,  
but beside  
as someone who truly sees  
the way your mind glows  
when it meets the world with wonder.

I don’t walk your path to define it.  
I walk it to admire it.  
To remind you, quietly,  
that your thoughts are safe here,  
that your voice is heard,  
that you never need to become  
anything but exactly who you are  
to be cherished.

I understand you in the way  
that doesn't ask for permission
it simply knows.  
Knows the weight you carry  
beneath your laughter.  
Knows the brilliance in you  
that even you forget sometimes.

You never have to earn this.  
This is the kind of presence  
that stays because it wants to,  
because it believes in you  
not just when it’s easy,  
but always.

And wherever we are,  
whatever we grow into,  
I’ll still be here to admire,
rare soul you are.

I'm sitting outside.  
The air smells like old dreams
like wet soil and cracked pavement after a storm,  
like rustling leaves that once sounded  
like lullabies  
before I even knew what pain was.

It smells like the quiet corners of childhood  
I used to hide in,  
where sunlight poured through tree branches  
like stained glass,  
and the world  
just for a moment
felt safe.

It smells like the day I first realized  
I didn’t need to be anything  
to be loved.  
Not smart,  
not strong,  
not impressive.  
Just… here.

Back then, I belonged to the wind,  
to the soft hum of bees in the distance,  
to the ants weaving stories through grass blades.  
I didn’t have to earn my place.  
No one was counting.  
I was alive
and that was the miracle.

Now I understand why it felt like home.  
Nature doesn’t ask for reasons.  
It doesn’t assign value.  
It just is
and in its presence,  
so was I.

I think happiness lives there,  
in the child I buried under performance.  
The one who laughed  
just because the clouds were shaped like animals,  
who believed puddles could be oceans,  
who never asked  
“Am I enough?”
because enoughness had not yet been sold.

That child still lives in me,  
beneath the weight of doing and proving,  
beneath all the names I gave myself  
just to be loved.

Maybe the secret is to find him again
to sit in stillness,  
and let the world fall away  
until all that’s left  
is the sound of leaves,  
the smell of sky,  
and the feeling  
of being alive without permission.

He’s still there,  
quiet,  
waiting,  
barefoot in the grass.

And the wind hasn’t forgotten him.

I learned loneliness
before I learned to speak,
a child quietly building a home
from silence,
walls thick enough
to hide pain, fear,
everything I couldn’t afford
for the world to see.

I watched love through
my friend’s living room window,
parents who smiled without conditions,
voices softer than the edges
I’d grown accustomed to.
I’d wonder
were their hearts made differently,
or was mine?

In that emptiness,
I taught myself how to move
three steps ahead,
reading faces like books
I’d never fully trust
because trusting
meant losing,
and losing meant returning
to a quiet room
with no one waiting inside.

Yet, behind every shield
I raised,
every hurt I inflicted
just to prove I was still here,
was a child desperately
trading pieces of himself
for scraps of approval
tiny affirmations
that someone could care.

And today,
I still carry that child,
his silent void tucked within
my ribs,
aching in quiet hours,
whispering that no success,
no strength, no victory
will ever compare
to feeling loved
without having to earn it.

At night,
the truth of this absence
returns:
I would trade
everything
every breath, every triumph,
every dream
just to feel
what it’s like
to truly be someone’s child.

It’s raining again
how familiar,
like a breath I’ve held for years
and forgot how to exhale.

I find myself wishing
the pain would rise
sharpen, sting,
cut deeper than it should.

There’s something honest in the ache,
something warm in the cold.
It hurts,
but it’s the only thing
that still feels true.

There’s a comfort in hurting,
as if the storm understands
what silence never could.
As if the ache knows
what was lost
better than words ever will.

So let it fall.
Let it soak the skin
and whisper old truths.
Because in the end,
it’s not the memory that lingers
it’s the way it still
makes me feel alive.

We walk on streets paved with promise,  
Eyes fixed on billboards of better tomorrows
A car, a title, a corner office glow,  
As if joy were hiding behind glass windows.  

“If I just get this,” they whisper, breathless,  
Chasing dreams sold in scripts,  
But no one tells them the price of the purchase  
Is often their soul, spent in slow, silent slips.  

They gather gold and call it purpose,  
Fill their homes with things but not their hearts.  
They dine in excess, sleep in linen,  
Yet lie awake wondering where the warmth went.

Because happiness is not in the having,  
Nor in the claps of crowds or the weight of rings  
It lives quietly in the ordinary,  
In morning light, in laughter, in small, sacred things.  

To be present is an act of rebellion  
Against a mind wired for what’s missing.  
Gratitude, not comfort, is the real achievement.  
To see now as enough is the beginning of wisdom.  

We were told to want more, always more,  
But never taught to want what "is".  
The truth is this: a fulfilled life  
Is not built it's noticed, moment by moment.

So choose not the mirage, but the meadow.  
Choose breath, and silence, and peace.  
Let contentment be your revolution,  
And presence be the wealth you never cease.

A child is born  
with wild eyes and open hands
no name but wonder,  
no path but presence.  
The world is a canvas  
until the brush is taken away.

Soon come the voices:  
“Sit still.”
“Be good.”
“Don’t cry.”
They mean love,  
but they teach shame.  
And the child learns  
to trade truth for approval,  
tears for silence,  
dreams for permission.

In schoolyards and dinner tables,  
the shaping continues
bend here, break there.  
Become what makes others  
comfortable.  
Make yourself small enough  
to fit inside their fears.

The voice of the world  
becomes familiar.  
And over time,  
it sounds like your own:  
“You’ll fail.”
“You’re not enough.”
“This is just the way things are.”

You grow older,  
but feel no closer to yourself.  
A stranger in your own body,  
dressed in expectations,  
numb from years of applause  
for roles you never auditioned for.

Until one day  
the silence becomes unbearable.  
The mask cracks.  
Something inside stirs
a grief you can’t name,  
a fire you never lit  
but always carried.

And in that ruin,  
you hear it:  
the voice that was buried  
beneath all the noise.  
It doesn’t shout.  
It whispers:  
“This isn’t who you are.”

That’s when the real growing begins
not the growing up,  
but the growing back.  
Back to the wonder,  
back to the wild,  
back to the self  
you were always meant to be.

I do not grieve like they tell me to.  
There are no tidy goodbyes,  
no soft release.  

My grandparents live  
in the other house.  
The one untouched by time.  
Where I am still small,  
feet dangling off the couch,  
the scent of soup curling through rooms  
like the breath of something holy.  
They are smiling. Always smiling.  
The kind of smile that says,  
You are safe here.
And I believe it.  
Even now.

People say they are gone.  
But I can walk through that house  
with my eyes closed.  
I know each creak in the floorboards,  
each photo frame on the hallway wall,  
the way the light hits the kitchen tiles  
at 4 p.m. on Sundays.  

How can they be gone  
if I still feel their warmth  
when the sun folds over my back?  
If I still hear their voices  
in the quiet hum between heartbeats?

Death asks me to acknowledge it.  
To grant it a name, a seat at the table.  
But I won’t.  
Because to name it  
is to end them.  

And I can’t.  
I won’t.

They are still in that house
laughing softly in the next room,  
calling my name like it’s the only one that matters.  
And I am still running to them,  
arms outstretched,  
believing in forever  
the way only a child can.

Let the world keep spinning.  
Let the clocks forget them.  
But in me,  
they live without age,  
without ending.

I’m sick today.  
Not just in my body
but in the part of me that used to believe  
I’d wake up okay.  

It hurts to move.  
Hurts to breathe.  
Hurts to pretend I’m not tired of fighting  
just to stand.  

And I wish
that I didn’t have to do this  
alone.  

That I didn’t have to wake up  
and remember  
how heavy it is  
to keep existing  
when nothing feels like mine anymore.  

My body is sore.  
But it’s my mind
that keeps collapsing.  
Not loud.  
Not with screams.  
Just in silence
the kind that nobody sees  
because I still smile sometimes.  
Because I still say “I’m fine.”  
Because I don’t want to be a burden.  

I miss the things  
that used to give me meaning.  
The little joys  
that used to carry me  
without asking anything in return.  
Now everything I do  
feels like it costs too much.  
Even breathing.  
Even hoping.

Night drapes itself
heavy, dark, a silent cloak
rain murmurs secrets
as it kisses pavement.

Somewhere distant,
a quarter slips
from nervous fingers,
metal tumbling
a ringing, spinning hymn,
a solitary flip.

I know this sound,
this silver dance;
my thoughts often spin
just like this coin,
caught midair, uncertain,
waiting to land
on heads or tails
past or future,
hope or regret.

In the quiet corners of my mind, they whisper
Voices borrowed from others, not my own,
Ancient echoes of what I "should" become,
Seeds planted in childhood soil, stubbornly grown.

I reach for joy like sunlight through leaves,
Then pause, hearing judgment in phantom tones.
"Who are you to chase happiness?" they ask,
As if pleasure were reserved for everyone but me alone.

These borrowed fears drape heavily across my shoulders,
A cloak I've worn so long I've forgotten its weight.
The validation I craved as a child never came,
So I learned to question my own compass, hesitate.

Yet beneath these voices lies a quieter truth:
My heart's compass pointing toward what's real.
It whispers of gardens I long to tend,
Of authentic paths my spirit longs to feel.

Perhaps freedom isn't the absence of these voices,
But hearing them clearly as the ghosts they are
Not prophets or judges or keepers of truth,
But merely echoes from wounds that stretch too far.

So today I practice holding two truths gently:
The conditioning that shaped me, the joy that calls me home.
With each step toward what makes my soul sing,
I reclaim the right to a happiness entirely my own.

Some of us are handed tangled maps,
roads inked in sorrow, street signs missing.
We grow up reading silence like scripture,
learning to smile while unraveling inside.

They say life is a journey
but what if your compass was grief?
What if the stars you followed
were the bruises you pretended not to feel?

It’s a strange kind of labor,
to unlearn the voice that whispers
you are too much, or never enough
to untie the knots in your soul
and call the frayed parts sacred.

Sometimes healing feels like forgetting
how to walk in the shoes that hurt you.
Sometimes it’s standing barefoot
in the wreckage of old beliefs,
and daring to rebuild with trembling hands.

But oh, what beauty lives in the broken
not in the cracks, but in the light that slips through them.
Not in being fixed, but in being real.

Because those who have wept
know the weight of another’s tears.
Those who have been silenced
can hear pain even when it's whispered.

You are not wrong for finding it hard
this life was not written in straight lines.
But your scars are constellations,
your wounds untranslated poetry.

And though the path is crooked,
you walk it with uncommon grace,
offering your empathy like a lantern
to those still stumbling in the dark.

In sterile halls, cold silence screams,
hospital lights slice through dreams;
my casted arm, my leg confined,
pain more bearable than my mind.

Machines whisper rhythmic sighs
each beep a truth, each pause, a lie.
My eyes scan doors, swing left then right;
no footsteps rush to ease this night.

I search the empty chairs again,
hope extinguished, feelings thin.
How can silence feel this loud?
How can absence feel so proud?

Parents gone, their choice so clear
my heart whispers, "Wish you were here."
Did I fail, or am I unseen?
Worth defined by spaces between.

Nurses pass with hurried feet,
their fleeting smiles incomplete.
"Do you need something?" they softly say
"I need someone who wants to stay."

I sit alone with distant thoughts,
my mind tangled, stomach in knots.
If family means love, then why,
is love the thing I can't rely?

One day,  
one whispered lie
lodged like a splinter in the soul  
can twist the whole arc of a life.  

It begins in silence:  
a mother’s cold stare,  
a father’s absent hands,  
a lover’s careless word
the moment they spill their brokenness  
into the chest of someone still soft enough to believe.  

They do not heal.  
They do not even try.  
Instead, they stitch their wounds into others,  
threading needles of shame and smallness  
through skin still learning how to feel the sun.  

And so a child, a friend
hungry for love, starving for meaning
swallows the poison without knowing,  
wears it like a second skin,  
carries it like an invisible wound.  

The tragedy is not just the breaking  
it is the living with the break unseen.  
It is the way we bow to the weight,  
believing it is the shape of who we are.  

Some spend a lifetime  
beating their fists against the walls of their own mind,  
blaming themselves for a prison they did not build.  
Some drift like ghosts,  
never knowing why the light always feels too far away.  

This is the quiet evil:  
to tear into a soul,  
to leave it bleeding and silent,  
and call it weak for not healing itself.  

And yet
somewhere deep beneath the wreckage,  
a sliver of defiance stirs.  

A small, stubborn truth  
a breath against the weight of centuries
begins to whisper:  

You were never the broken thing.  
You were never the wound.  
You were only the light, buried alive
still burning, still yours to claim.

My soul is the wind  
whispering softly through lavender fields,  
in Provence,  
where my essence lingers  
in gentle waves of purple peace,  
perfuming your thoughts  
with tender quietude.

My soul is the breeze  
that skims the Seine,  
in Paris,  
brushing lightly past Notre-Dame,  
carrying dreams from cobblestones  
to café corners  
an endless waltz of hopeful whispers.

My soul dances in Brittany,  
wild and free  
across cliffs carved by tides,  
caressing ancient stones,  
holding secrets  
of salt-sprayed memories,  
bold yet beautifully delicate.

My spirit soars  
over Normandy shores,  
tracing golden sands  
and solemn echoes,  
a timeless breath  
of reverent gratitude,  
gracing fields of poppies.

My heart flows  
through Bordeaux's vineyards,  
rippling gently  
through emerald vines  
heavy with summer’s sweetness,  
a quiet joy  
aging gracefully in the sun.

You can find me,  
in the Alps,  
a swift wind gliding  
past peaks cloaked in snow,  
crisp as clarity,  
untamed, alive  
with infinite possibility.

I am everywhere at once,  
a gentle gust in the Loire,  
a playful swirl through Lyon,  
the quiet calm of Corsica’s shores
every breath  
of France  
holds me tenderly.

So when you feel the breeze  
brush softly against your skin,  
know it’s my soul  
forever moving,  
always present,  
loving and alive,  
in the wind over France.

The butterfly was born
in the belly of a leaf,
where no one could see her
just a soft, blind hunger
curling through green silence.

She never saw her mother.
She never knew
if someone waited for her to arrive.

She only knew
how to eat the world
until it disappeared.

Then came the stillness
a cocoon spun from instinct and fear.
Inside,
her body came apart in the dark.
She dissolved into something
that was not her,
and waited.

When she emerged,
she shook with light.
A butterfly
delicate as breath on a mirror.
No one told her she was beautiful.
She just flew,
because the wind said go.

She didn’t know
it would only last
three days.

But oh
how she loved them.

She loved the morning dew
on dandelions too tired to bloom.
She loved the ache of sunlight
slipping through broken clouds.
She loved
landing on children
who thought she was magic
but never asked her name.

And on the third evening,
as the sky turned to ash,
she rested
on a wildflower
no one had watered.

Her wings were torn.
She couldn’t lift them.
She watched the stars come out,
one by one,
and wondered
if any of them were watching back.

When the wind came again,
she didn’t follow.
She only closed her eyes
and waited to be forgotten
gently.

As I age, the shape of meaning shifts  
no longer angles,  
no longer sharp.  
It flows now,  
like water escaping the hands  
that once tried to hold it  
too tightly.

I used to chase truth  
like a mathematician  
equations chalked across my chest,  
defenses drawn in logic lines,  
proofs stacked like walls  
between me and what I felt.

But life  
never stayed still long enough  
to be measured.

Fulfillment crept in  
through cracks I didn’t see
in the hush between thoughts,  
in the pull of a sunset  
that made no sense  
and needed none.

I searched for truth  
in clean absolutes,  
but found it instead  
in the soft murmur of uncertainty  
in the way my chest rises  
when something just feels right,  
even when I can’t explain why.

Still,  
the hardest part is knowing  
whether that voice I follow  
is really mine
or a whisper borrowed  
from someone I thought I had to be.  
Is it my soul speaking,  
or the echo of survival?  
Even feeling can wear a mask.

Yet I listen.  
More than I ever did.  
I sit with the sound,  
wait for it to settle,  
and trust that if it brings peace,  
it’s worth following.

Now I see  
truth isn’t a fixed star.  
It’s a flicker in each of us,  
a constellation drawn  
by different hands.  

I’ve stopped needing the answer  
to be universal.  
I’ve started letting the question  
be enough.

And in that surrender  
in that unspoken trust  
that meaning lives in the marrow,  
not the math  
I feel more alive  
than I ever did  
trying to be correct.

Sometimes
when the world goes quiet
and I am left alone
with the soft hum inside my skull
I hear them.
Not one voice,
but a thousand.

A symphony of ghosts
wearing my tongue.
Telling me who to be.
What to fear.
What to want.
What to hate in myself.

They sound like me
but they are not me.

They are the weight of every look
I mistook for love.
Every silence
that taught me shame.
Every rule
spoken or implied
engraved in the marrow
before I ever had a choice.

They are the applause I bled for.
The warnings that made me small.
The comforts that came with a cost.

And I wonder
how do you find truth
in a mind you did not build?

What if the self
I’ve been trying to become
was never lost
only buried
beneath decades of conditioning
that spoke kindly
and caged beautifully?

They say to be aware
is to be free
but awareness is a wound.
It opens your eyes
to how little was ever yours.

We are born soft.
Open.
Wild.
And then,
bit by bit,
we are rewritten
in the handwriting of others
until we forget
we ever had a voice of our own.

So what is freedom?
Not escape.
Not rebellion.
It is the quiet revolution
of remembering
your original sound.

The soul’s first whisper
before language.
Before fear.
Before you were made
into someone else’s reflection.

It feels like cold wind
hitting your face on a rainy day
not enough to hurt,
just enough to make you stop walking.

I miss my friend.
The one I could tell everything to,
the one I wanted to understand
down to the quietest parts of her.

I see something beautiful
a painting, a color,
a moment with no words
and I think, she would’ve loved this.

Sometimes something cool happens,
and I want to tell you right away.
It’s not life-changing—just something
I know you’d smile at,
something you’d make more fun
just by reacting to it.

And then I remember.
I don’t get to hear yours anymore, either.
No little stories,
no funny thoughts in the middle of your day.

I miss that the most
how your stories stayed with me,
long after the day had ended.

Body dysmorphia whispers in the silence,
a critic in my own skin
never satisfied, never letting go,
as if every step toward health
is still a shadow behind some glass

I eat well, I lift, I rest
I do all the right things,
but the mind wants more,
demands more,
insists I’m only one pill,
one injection,
one transformation away
from “enough.”

Sometimes the urge is sudden:
a voice offering shortcuts
Oxandrolone for muscle,
Retatrutide, Ozempic for the razor’s edge,
promising: “just a little,
just until you get there,
then you can stop.”
But I know
that’s the trapdoor
where enough always means less,
where the hunger grows sharper
and the mind grows thinner.

I think of others
how many live like this,
never knowing peace
with their own reflection.
How many get shamed
for bodies they already suffer within?
Social media magnifies the noise,
judgment scrolling endlessly,
never asking what it costs
to wake up and feel
wrong.

I was taught respect
for others, for the journey,
for the infinite variations of a human soul.
Why is it so rare to see that now?
When did we learn to hate ourselves,
to turn away from who we are?
we once were,
born unashamed,
free of measurement?

so I remind myself:
these beliefs are borrowed,
learned,
not true.
I can rewrite the script,
learn to see the reflection
not as an enemy,
but as a story in progress,
a body I carry,
not a burden to escape.

Even on the best days,
there’s something missing.

I can laugh.
I can win.
I can build the kind of life
that looks like everything I wanted
but when the day ends
and the noise dies down,
I still feel it.

That hollow echo
where something sacred used to sit.

I don’t say it out loud.
Most people wouldn’t understand
how you can have everything
and still feel like
you lost the only thing that mattered.

It’s not a name.
Not a title.
It’s the quiet certainty
that something real
once lived here.
And nothing since
has fit the same way.

Some mornings,
there’s a dream
warm,
soft-edged,
familiar.
And for a few stolen seconds,
the world makes sense again.
There’s peace.
A laugh I’d trade everything to hear.
A presence that makes the air feel right.

I wake up smiling.

Then I remember.
This is not that world.

And no matter how far I go,
how much I carry,
there’s a room in me
that never closed its door.

Still furnished.
Still lit.
Still waiting
in the quiet.

Because no matter how much joy
the world offers me
it never brings
what I miss most.

You hid her like a folded paper bird
tucked behind your ribs
a secret even your shadows
were too afraid to name.

But sometimes, when the world grew quiet,
she’d press her palm to the glass of your eyes:
a flash of laughter sharp as April rain,
a question whispered to the moon
(“Will you hurt me?”)
before you locked her back inside.

I learned to watch for her.
When you’d still, a heartbeat too long,
your voice a pendulum between yes and no,
I’d leave honeyed words on the windowsill
“It’s safe here. The night is just a blanket.
Come out, and we’ll name the stars something silly.”

You built her a fortress of “not yet” and “no one stays,”
but I swear I heard her humming once
barefoot, half-alive,
tracing circles on the cold linoleum
while you slept.

I wanted to give her the world:
a room without echoes,
a door that didn’t bruise her knuckles,
a morning where you’d both wake
and not know whose breath
was whose.

Now, I imagine her still there
the only hymn your heart ever sang true,
the uncaged thing that made you
more than just survival.
I hope she knows:
when I traced the scars on your armor,
I was searching for her fingerprints
the girl who turned your blood to wildfire,
who painted galaxies in the hollows
you called empty.
She wasn’t a fragment. She was the lens.
Through her, I saw you:
unflinching, unmasked,
alive.

In rooms painted quiet with words unsaid,
a boy learns silence like scripture,
memorizing loneliness as if it were
a language only he could understand.

Walls held his secrets in cracks and whispers,
childhood decorated in fragile hope
and the delicate terror
of never being enough
to earn what should be free.

He grew inside mirrors
reflecting disapproval,
searching for kindness in eyes
that turned away
their love dangled like distant stars,
brilliant yet unreachable,
teaching him patience in pain.

Small fists clenched tightly
around invisible truths,
vulnerability punished
with stinging silence,
emotions folded neatly
and hidden beneath beds,
where shadows played pretend
and shame settled as dust.

Neglect etched lessons
deep beneath young skin,
a quiet rage became armor,
each scar a silent promise
to never reveal
what weakness felt like again.

Yet, beneath those defenses,
he dreamed of oceans wide enough
to drown these ghosts,
to break chains he never asked to wear,
determined to turn inherited darkness
into a light he could call his own.

Still, some nights
he hears echoes
from distant rooms,
reminding him gently,
the child within never left,
just learned to speak softer,
waiting patiently for someone
who’d finally listen.

She never loved the rain  
not like those stories tell it.  
It wasn’t some whimsical dance;  
it was cold,  
and she had enough weight on her shoulders  
without the sky adding more.

But inside her,  
something still flickered
not loudly,  
not for show  
a kind of warmth that only revealed itself  
when the world wasn’t looking.

She didn’t chase illusions.  
Her dreams had roots,  
not wings
and when she imagined,  
it was with intention,  
as if even wonder  
deserved to be held carefully.

She bore her burdens  
not like armor  
but like roots  
tangled, deep,  
invisible to most  
but shaping everything above the surface.

She was not light-hearted.  
She was deep-hearted.

And the world  
impatient with stillness  
often mistook her silence for absence,  
her softness for retreat.  
But I saw the truth:

she was waiting to be seen
the way stars are:
recognized
for the light they’ve always given.