He called her a ****-tease.
The word fell heavy, sharp as stones
breaking a bird’s flight mid-air.
She stood still. Her spirit fled—
to the quiet fields of her elders,
where flowers opened their mouths
only to name themselves.

The dress,
its soft rebellion,
became his battlefield.
"*****," he spat, each letter
a cracked drumbeat
splintering the silence between them.
Outside, dusk folded its hands,
a god turning away
from the sound of a woman
breaking.

When his palm
found her cheek,
the stars held their breath.
The earth bent at the waist.
His hands—desperate shadows
on her throat—learned quickly
what could not be held.

She walked barefoot
into the ancestral fields,
where the soil hummed
with the weight of her leaving.
Women waited there,
their grief braided with light.
They opened their mouths
and her name rose,
whole as a hymn.

I did not come to this earth
to die for the shadow of a dream,
to impale my heart on the sharp thorns
of ambition’s endless rose.
No, I came to live inside the quiet rivers,
to carry the soft weight of the morning’s light
in my hands,
to bury my face in the soil of ordinary days
and rise, fragrant with their whispers.

I did not seek perfection;
perfection is a cruel wind
that bends no branch,
allows no blossom to fall.
Instead, I search for the cracks—
those holy fractures
where the light sings its way in,
where life spills like wine
across the trembling lips of the world.

We are fluent in pain,
each of us holding the dialect of loss
in our bones.
I have read the script of your tears,
seen my own reflection
in the glass of your breaking.
Your heart is a book I know by touch,
each page etched with sorrow
and the tender thumbprints of hope.

I do not long for glory—
glory is a fleeting bird
with a broken wing.
I long for the quiet threads
that sew the sacred to the common:
the bread shared at a wooden table,
the warmth of a hand that holds without asking,
the beauty of a scar kissed by time.

There is a beauty in suffering,
a beauty that does not demand mending.
It stands like a mountain at dusk,
silent and untouchable.
It does not cry for transcendence,
but for the gaze of another,
for the voice that says,
“I am here.
I will not turn away.”

Let us walk,
not as conquerors,
but as pilgrims,
our feet stained by the dust of this earth.
Let us stumble,
our burdens carried not in shame
but as offerings,
as gifts to one another.
We will not flee the ache of life—
no, we will drink it,
pour it into the chalice of the stars,
and watch it glow softly,
a lantern that whispers,
“We are here.
We are enough.”