My mind, ruminating,
thoughts eating themselves,
snaking longer, longer,
like that old Nokia phone,
remember?
The game we played—
winning meant losing space,
meant swallowing whole.

I can’t stop it.
No off switch.
No pause, no rewind.
Memory flickers, a broken reel,
an unreliable witness in my own courtroom.
Why did I disassociate?
To survive, to vanish?
Was I drunk on innocence,
or did I crave your love so much
I kept my mouth shut,
called my silence devotion?

You—
standing there in my shadow,
writing your story over mine,
turning my quiet into consent.
But I was always spinning,
always folding inward,
splintering.

Now I haunt the game,
chasing the tail of what I was,
swallowed by the loop,
still wondering
if I’ll ever find the center.

She shattered like a ripe pomegranate,  
its crimson seeds spilling  
on that frostbitten morning,  
where daylight carved truth  
into her skin,  
each ray a scalpel,  
each breath a confession.

Unraveled, she lay bare,  
a manuscript of scars,  
love’s futile battles  
etched in dried blood,  
bones jutting like the last  
frayed edges of a dream.

Tattoos inked in shadows,  
quivering black on alabaster,  
the ghost of him lingered,  
his fingerprints seared  
into her flesh,  
a haunting memory  
before the silence claimed him.

He was the prophet,  
the muse woven through lifetimes,  
departing like a forgotten flame,  
his whispers curling  
in the suffocating dark.  

We are all adrift,  
lost in the labyrinth of ourselves,  
struggling to stitch together  
the frayed seams of commitment.  
He extinguished his will to survive,  
lost in the wilderness  
of self-destruction.

Her belly, heavy with unspoken dreams,  
intoxicated by promises,  
the poison lingering from his kiss.  
She bottled his anguish,  
teardrops mingling with time,  
an elixir of shared stories,  
each drop a memory,  
each memory a shard of light.

Through the years,  
in the tapestry of shadows,  
somewhere we will meet again,  
forever my keeper,  
forever my ghost.