Fragments of a dying light,
His words of sorrow crumble in my mouth,
Splinters of a shattered mirror—
Light refracting,
The iron taste lingers, bitter and raw.

The hoary silhouette of bare branches looms,
Their grip frozen, unmoving, still—
A vast, naked nothingness
Dwells within me,
Hollow, cold, and bare.

Identities unknown, faces erased,
Responsibility slips into the void.
Confusion swells, a tide of paranoia,
Scattered dreams of strangers,
Shoals glimmering in ceaseless dance.

Rapid-fire bullets of offence,
A necklace of sins,
Heavy, choking,
My drowning heart clenched tight,
Twenty years of youth bled dry.

Once, I felt brave—
A warrior in the haze,
A needle my sword, ****** my shield.
Layer by layer, I sought salvation,
Grasping, frantic, at false light.

I needed his pity,
His shame,
His love to save me from myself.
But betrayal stained the air—
A wound too deep to heal.

Fishhooks pierce and pull,
Entrapment tears my flesh apart.
Love dies slow,
Its remnants shatter,
Leaving only the wreckage of me.

She sketched the quiet,
with charcoal shadows and haunting trees,
bending to winds that whispered lies,
calling, but never her name.

Wildflowers leaned in defiance,
toward a light she could not feel,
children’s laughter, untamed rivers,
while hers unraveled into dust.

An old soul, they said,
drifting through doors left ajar,
a wanderer in borrowed lives,
but always a stranger,
always a ghost.

She craved the world,
its wild crescendos, its burning skies,
but the edges cut too deep.
Her hands, blistered from endless reaching,
held truths too sharp to release.
The rain came and kissed the earth,
but her skin held the stains,
red as warnings,
swollen like secrets buried alive.

The bruises healed but lingered,
etched on the walls of her mind,
like shadows curling tight
around a room with no escape.

She tasted love once,
a fleeting hymn in a cathedral of storms,
a breath of warmth on frostbitten lips.
He devoured the letters she wrote,
exhaling truths that burned through her chest.

No one knew the weight she bore,
the silence stitched across her ribs,
like velvet sewn with broken glass.
She wrote, she spun fragile threads of light,
a tapestry too beautiful to wear,
her soul adrift in a realm
untouched by what she could not name.

In the end, she lived
in the spaces between,
between the screams,
between the quiet,
between the words
she dared not sing.

I am the dandelion stripped bare,
a clock undone by the unkind wind.
The mirrors show only fractures—
golden veins soldered by despair,
a mosaic of bruises in pale flesh.

He smells of bonfires and damp earth,
his words the gravel I swallow nightly.
They lodge in my throat,
sharp, unyielding,
a wound that never softens.

Children scribble lives onto the walls,
their chalk-stained hands clean of memory.
But I, I cradle dust,
collect it in jars like dead stars,
its weight heavy as unspoken apologies.

Autumn’s throat opens,
spilling leaves like confessions
nobody wanted to hear.
The trees, skeletons now,
stand naked in their quiet accusations.

He pushed me into the bloom of violence,
a ****** rose garden beneath my tongue.
I tasted the metal of his hate
and whispered back my surrender,
weak as the wind that kissed my wrists.

Was I ever more than ash,
a ghost of flesh, a runaway child
chased by the shadows of promises
never meant to hold?
The doorway in my eyes collapses inward—
a city burned down before it was built.

The branches bend, the whispers scream,
Pop the bubble, shatter the dream.
Strawberry lips, sweet with rot,
“Can you keep a secret?” She forgot.

Violence bleeds, running cold,
Winter veins, no heart to hold.
Stone beats hollow, fire burns red,
She’s alive, but inside she’s dead.

Momma said, “Pick one or two,”
She picked him, she never picked you.
Cries fell flat, the echoes lied,
Left her kid to fight or die.

Throw a punch, break the skin,
Storm rolls in, let the dark begin.
Kick in teeth, spit out hate,
She’s the girl you’ll never save.

No sweet songs, no bedtime grace,
Just screams carved deep into her face.
“Strawberry,” she hums, sharp and neat,
“Can you keep a secret?” Her rage complete.