I walk.
I walk with grace.
I walk with grace and care.
I walk with grace and care, unseen.
Who am I, though rarely noticed?

I speak.
I speak with kindness.
I speak with kindness and truth.
I speak with kindness, truth, and respect.
Who am I, though often forgotten?

I stand.
I stand for justice.
I stand for justice and peace.
I stand for justice, peace, and love.
Who am I, though not perfect?

The answer you seek
Is what you create.
A decent human waits unseen.

People sit on their ***** and moan,
throwing words like stones at shadows.
They write poems filled with nothing
no light in the dark,
no mirror to the soul,
no love for the hummingbird
or the bee.

Just more moaning.
This politician. That one.
Mona, Mona, moan.
A parade of little monkeys
squatting by a muddy river,
scratching their bums,
flicking poo across the stream
instead of feeling the sun
on their skin.

Where is the poem
that breathes with wonder?
That holds the air
like a newborn holds light?
That smells the flowers,
stands in the shade of a tree,
and says thank you?

We take too much for granted.

I don’t want to start my day
moaning about someone
who doesn’t even know I exist.
What good is a poem
that turns hearts bitter
and forgets the sky above?

I’d rather write beauty.
Write something that matters.
Something that smiles back.

Start with your own bubble.
Change what’s close,
what your hands can reach.
If you don’t like what’s there,
stretch out and change it.
That’s where meaning lives.

Go outside.
Touch the day.
Feel the wonder of difference
how strange and beautiful we are.
Walk on the beach.
Hold the air,
hold the sun,
hold the hand of someone
who does make a difference.

Life is short, dear friend.
Nothing is promised.
We take each other for granted
we take everything for granted.
When last did you let an ant
crawl across your hand
and just say, “Wow”?
Then gently place it back
where it came from?

Now we squash it.
**** it.
Feel like kings.
“Yeah, we showed it.”
But we show nothing.

I have my dogs
mommy and her two boys.
I’ve never seen a love so whole.
Yet we humans
we’ve lost the plot.
We moan and complain
instead of complimenting,
hugging,
offering food,
buying coffee for a stranger,
or just saying,
I’m glad you’re here.

We fixate on the wrong things,
throwing poo
when we could be planting trees.

Learn something.
Give something.
Grow something.

Acknowledge the bad — yes
but don’t live there.
Don’t let your little rowboat
circle a storm
when just a few more strokes
could bring you peace.

Beauty waits quietly
on the front step.
You don’t need a plane ticket.
Sometimes it’s a bird’s song.
Sometimes it’s the breath in your chest.

So when the world moans
sing.

And mean it.

I pressed my ear to the silence
and heard you humming
not a tune,
but a presence,
a bruise that remembers
the shape of the fist.

Your absence
grows roots in my organs,
cracks in my ribs
where memory nests
and lays its spiteful eggs.

I speak,
but the breath is borrowed.
I dream,
and wake up with hands
not mine,
holding guilt
I don’t remember baking
but still swallow whole.

You live in the slant
of my posture,
a tilt toward grief
I’ve mistaken for normal.
Even my stillness
is contaminated—
your fingerprints
pressed into my pause.

What name do I scream
when I scream inside?
Is it yours
or mine distorted,
choked through the filter
of a childhood overwritten
by trespass?

I tried to evict you
with fire,
but flame licked my skin
and whispered:
you brought this match.

I’m tired
of being haunted
by someone still alive,
tired of rooms
that smell like your last word,
of smiles I wear
like splinters.

I dig
through my psyche’s landfill
and keep pulling up
your broken watch,
ticking in reverse,
counting down
to a version of me
that never escaped.

What is identity
if it echoes?
If every mirror
I’ve smashed
bleeds your face?

No, I never let you in
you seeped,
spilled,
rewrote the blueprint
of my breath
while I was still
learning to count my ribs.

And now
I build myself
from scratch,
but every nail I hammer
sings your lullaby
in rusted rhythm.

Still
I keep building.

I tear into mirrors
not for answers
for the shimmer
of something half-familiar,
your shape
in the slipstream of my pupils,
lips I don’t own
forming apologies I don’t remember earning.

Call it self-reflection
but I am crowded
by you
like a rot beneath the drywall,
silent, patient,
building mold in my monologues.

My thoughts
barcoded
with your syntax,
your sighs
etched into the pause between
my thoughts,
like a watermark from a life I never consented to carry.

Who infected who?
Who tainted who's soul?
Who really lit the fire !

I dive into the trench of self,
flashlight trembling,
heart like wet laundry on rusted wire.
All I find
is your mouth in my voice,
your rage in my stillness,
your shadow curled in fetal syntax.

I am a footnote
in your biography of absence.
You
the poet I never wanted in my pen.

Did I choose this?
Did I script this tether?
Or did you graffiti my soul
when I was too young
to know how to lock a door?

I scratch at my skin
to find boundaries
but my blood whispers
your name like a psalm
sung backward
at midnight
by a child who forgot God.

I know more of you
than you ever offered,
and less of myself
each time I touch the mirror
and it flinches.

So I light a fire
in the basement of my mind
to smoke you out
but all that flees
wears my face.