The soul
is not skin,
not bone,
not something you can point to
or name.

It’s the ache behind the smile,
the tremble before truth,
the way your chest tightens
when a song knows you
better than you know yourself.

It’s memory,
tied in threads of scent and sound.
It’s grief that lingers
in a room long emptied,
and love
you still feel
for someone long gone.

It carries every version
of who you’ve been.
the child who dreamed,
the teen who feared,
the adult still learning
what it means to be whole.

The soul bruises quietly.
It celebrates in silence.
It’s heavy with things
no one else sees,
but it still shines
in your laugh,
in your quiet kindness,
in the way you keep going.

And maybe that’s the soul’s secret:
it can break
and still glow
like something holy
trying
to make this life
mean something.

I see you between bells, in the rush of bodies and the echo of lockers slamming shut.
You don’t know me,
Not really,
But I know the way your smile breaks sideways,
How your laugh drifts down the hall like a song I don’t know the lyrics to,
But hum anyway.

Two weeks left.
Fourteen days
to maybe say something,
Or nothing at all.

Maybe I’ll keep pretending I’m not looking
When you pass,
Or maybe I’ll finally meet your eyes before the hallway goes silent.

Summer break is almost there.
I fear you’ll change school,
Or stay.
Maybe by then you’ll already have a girlfriend.

And I’ll wonder
What might’ve happened
If I just
Said
Hi.

Depression doesn’t disappear,
it doesn’t pack up and leave.
It waits,
sometimes heavy,
sometimes light,
like a shadow folding in on itself.

Some days, it’s loud,
an echo in every breath,
a weight that drags you under.
Other days, it’s a whisper,
a quiet ache beneath the noise.

It doesn’t vanish,
it just learns to share space,
grows smaller,
so you can breathe,
so you can stand,
so you can hope.

Healing isn’t a clean break.
it’s living
with the quiet parts,
letting them fade
until they no longer own you.

But it never really disappears,
it just gets easier living with it.

They say time heals.
but some things don’t fade.
Not really.

Days pass,
weeks blur into months,
years stretch on,
and yet,
it sneaks back in.

A sudden thought,
a whisper in the quiet,
a shadow in the corner of a smile.

I try to move,
to let go,
to breathe without it clutching my chest.
but it won’t leave.

It lingers...
a ghost,
a weight,
a question without an answer.

No matter how far I run,
or how much I build new walls.
it’s still here.

Waiting.

Moving on isn’t forgetting.
It’s learning how to live
with what stays.

You see me laughing, smiling,
like I’ve got it all together,
like the world is mine to hold.

But look closer,
beyond the light in my eyes,
past the easy words,
beneath the surface of this calm.

There’s a storm I don’t speak of,
a weight I carry alone,
moments I swallow
so no one has to see.

I’m tired of pretending,
but I wear the mask
because it’s easier
than explaining the cracks.

Now, pause for a second.
and ask yourself,
who around you
is wearing the same mask?

Who smiles for you,
while quietly breaking?

Because sometimes,
the strongest people
are the ones who feel the most.

So if you see a smile,
don’t just see the smile.
see the story waiting to be told.

And maybe,
just maybe,
reach out before it’s too late.

The best thing about a picture
is that it never changes,
even when the people in it do.

A smile caught,
a laugh paused,
a moment stolen
from a river that never stops flowing.

In that still frame,
we are forever young,
forever whole.
before time pulled us apart,
before the cracks showed,
before the silence grew.

It holds what we lost,
what we forgot to keep,
what faded
while we were busy changing.

The best thing about a picture
is that it never changes.
and in it,
A single frame
holding forever
what time refuses to keep.

Cancer doesn’t crash in
like a storm.
It seeps in.
Quiet.
Cruel.
Certain.

It starts with a phone call,
a strange tone in someone’s voice,
a word you never wanted to hear
said out loud in a room that
suddenly forgets how to breathe.

And from there,
the world splits.

The person you love
still smiles,
still says they’re fine.
but the light behind their eyes
flickers.
Their body becomes a battlefield
no one asked to fight on.

You watch them shrink
while trying to stay brave.
Trying to laugh through nausea.
Trying to hide pain
like it’s a gift
to keep you from worrying.

And it steals them
bit by bit.
hair,
weight,
strength,
hope.

It doesn’t care
if they were kind,
if they were needed.

It just takes.

And the worst part?
You can’t hate it out loud.
Can’t punch it.
Can’t reason with it.
Can’t make it stop.

All you can do
is hold their hand
until one day
you can’t.

And you’re left
with a silence
that screams.