It comes with teeth —
sharp and glinting beneath an implacable smile,
sinking in slow,
pressing firmly against bone
until breath feels too thin
and mornings blur into shadows.
It waits beneath my tongue,
a bitter taste I can’t spit out,
curling through my chest,
tight as wire,
soft as fog.
It knows how to be silent,
until it doesn’t.
Until it’s ripping through the walls,
scratching at the seams,
a low growl in the hollow of my ribs.
And the talons —
God, the talons —
hooked deep in muscle and marrow,
dragging me down
to the cold floor of my mind,
where light flickers thin as breath
and silence hums like static.
It pulls —
slow and steady,
through hours that fold into nothing,
through days that taste like dust.
I let it.
Sometimes it’s easier that way.
But there’s always a sliver of air,
a crack of light under the door.
And somehow,
somehow —
my hands find it.
The teeth leave scars.
The talons bruise deep.
But I rise,
aching,
raw,
breathless —
still here.

The petals cling—
not out of need,
but by nature.
Crushed silk
beneath my boots,
they rise with each step,
trailing inside
like secrets.
I didn’t mean
to bring the outside in,
but they hitchhike
on rubber treads,
on the hush of my leaving.
Now they scatter
across tile and rug,
bright bits of ruin
that refuse to stay buried.
They mark where I’ve been—
not loudly,
just enough.
A quiet bloom
in the hallway,
a whisper of red
by the door.
Nothing dies,
it just follows.

The callouses on my palms
speak of daily labor,
the weight of tools and hours stretching long,
hands that ache but keep moving,
gripping, pulling, lifting—
muscles sore, skin raw,
yet there is something simple in the rhythm
of this work,
a quiet certainty in the bending of wood
or the turning of a *****.
But inside,
the mind churns—
thoughts collide like a thousand hammers,
clanging against each other in the silence.
I cannot hold them,
cannot grasp or shape them
the way I do with my hands.
Each thought is a jagged piece
that shifts just when I think I have it.
The struggle in my hands is known,
familiar, tangible.
The struggle in my mind is endless,
slipping through my fingers like water,
pulling at me with no end in sight,
a puzzle with no solution
that I’ve learned to carry
but never set down.
When I walk away from the work,
my hands are sore but satisfied.
I can see what I’ve built,
what I’ve touched,
the progress of my labor marked in the world around me.
But the mind—
it never stops,
never rests.
The weight of its questions
hangs in the air like smoke
and I breathe them in
again and again,
wondering
if I'll ever be free
from the things I cannot fix
with my hands.

I stand before the mirror,
and I know the face.
Calm, composed,
eyes carrying only what they’ve lived,
no more.
But behind it,
the glass keeps going—
reflections trailing into the dark,
a long corridor
of me becoming
me becoming
me.
At first,
they follow faithfully.
A lifted hand.
A turning head.
Perfect mimicry,
clean as water mirroring sky.
But the further they go,
the more they soften—
not all at once,
not enough to alarm.
A hesitation.
A fraction too long between blinks.
A smile that holds
for a moment after I’ve let go.
The next face seems
just slightly dimmer—
as if the light can’t quite reach it,
or it doesn’t want to be seen
too clearly.
The eyes are the same,
but they don’t land on mine
so easily.
They graze past me,
settle somewhere just beyond.
And further still,
the faces forget their place.
One tilts before I do.
One breathes when I don’t.
Some begin to still altogether—
perfectly motionless,
like portraits
remembering how to be alive.
The change is never sharp.
It is a slow turning of a wheel
beneath still water,
a quiet drift
in a long dream.
Each face is mine,
but less so.
Each carries something in the eyes
I haven’t earned yet—
or never will.
Deeper down the glass,
the faces seem older
not in years
but in silence.
They wear composure
too tightly,
like masks that forgot
how to come off.
And at the furthest depth—
so far the glass hums with distance—
one face no longer mimics at all.
It only watches,
calm,
unmoving,
as if it has been here
far longer
than I have been looking.
And I don’t know
if it waits for me
to catch up,
or
to leave.

The waves come,
slow at first —
a soft hiss against my ankles,
salt threading through the cracks of my skin.
I stand there,
breath shallow,
the tide licking at the edges of my bones.
But it doesn’t stay soft.
The water rises,
crashing hard against my chest,
a cold weight driving into muscle and marrow.
It pulls —
dragging sand from beneath my feet,
stealing fragments of ground
until I’m sinking inch by inch
into the hollow it leaves behind.
I try to stand tall,
shoulders squared against the surge,
but the waves don’t stop.
They break harder,
white foam tearing through breath,
the sharp bite of salt in my throat
burning as I gasp for air.
The undertow pulls.
The current sinks teeth into my calves,
dragging me toward the dark depths,
and I know —
there is no fighting this.
No shore to reach for,
no hand to pull me free.
So I stay.
I let it crash.
Let the salt carve new lines into my skin,
let the water smooth me down
until I’m nothing but raw stone and sea glass
gleaming beneath a broken sky.
I know I am smaller now —
shaped by the ebb and swell,
etched thin by salt and time —
but I am still standing.
Even as the tide returns,
even as the waves rise again,
I remain.

They do not whisper.
They arrive with sound—
a cataclysmic brass section in the cathedral of my skull,
blaring without rhythm, without reason.
Intrusive thoughts:
not guests, but invaders
storming through synapses with muddy boots
and fire on their tongues.
They don't knock.
They kick the door in,
screaming absurdities and doomsday sermons,
blaring guilt like sirens in the dark.
"What if you said it wrong?"
"What if you’re not enough?"
"What if everything you love slips through your fingers?"
These thoughts crack like thunder
as I’m walking through the silence—
each step meant to be peace,
each breath a prayer for stillness,
shattered in a flash of noise and fear.
Their horns shatter more than quiet.
Even in calm moments—especially in calm moments—
they raise their instruments to their cracked lips
and unleash noise
like the sky splitting open.
I flinch.
I brace.
I try to drown them with breath,
with mantras,
with the soft rhythm of reality.
But still they play.
Relentless.
Discordant.
Majestic in their cruelty.
And yet—
somewhere beneath the chaos,
a single, trembling note of defiance holds:
not all noise is truth.
Not every trumpet speaks prophecy.
I let them play.
Let them blare and blast and rage.
And then I move anyway,
into the next moment—
not unshaken,
but still standing.

The silence is not empty.
It hums, it swells, it presses against my skin
until I can hear nothing else.
No voices, no distant echoes—
just the weight of quiet,
thick as fog, heavy as stone.
And in the spaces where sound should be,
my thoughts emerge.
They slip from the shadows,
formless at first, but then—hands,
grasping, pulling, clawing their way into me.
They whisper truths I do not want to hear.
They twist memories into specters,
turning my past into a noose,
tightening with every breath.
I try to hold on, to keep my grip,
but they are relentless.
Sometimes, they rip me away,
tearing at the fragile threads
of the life I’ve fought to keep together.
I watch it unravel in slow motion,
each strand slipping through my fingers
as I am pulled deeper,
farther,
away.
No one sees the battle.
No one hears the struggle.
To them, I am quiet.
To them, I am whole.
But inside, the silence roars,
and the shadows hold me close,
waiting for the next moment
to take me again.