Flowers are in bloom
In secret valleys, they grow
The world it withers

Gifts you do not like
But these apples I have brought
They might be poison

If that gem lay there before you
the one you never knew you needed
if it shimmered
would you not reach to make it your own

If it sparkled, just enough
to lift your heart from where it sank
if it was there
would you turn away for lack of reason

Would you tell yourself it’s not for you
not meant, not earned, not real
that some hands are made to hold beauty
and yours are not among them

Would you fear it might fade in your grasp
or that you would
break it
smear the shine with doubt
taint the treasure by wanting it too much

Or would you kneel
not with greed but with wonder
fingers trembling, heart split open
and take it gently
like it had been waiting
for you
all along

They called my name and wore it thin,
A borrowed cloth against my skin.
Each word I spoke, each hand I shook,
Felt stolen from some braver book,
A mask too tight to fit within.

Applause became a kind of curse,
Each cheer, a verse I must rehearse.
Smile, nod, and hide the hollow eyes,
Clutch gilded trophies with dry sighs
While doubt wrote chapters even worse.

I learned to laugh, to play along,
To hum their praises like a song.
But every crown sat loose and wrong,
As if they’d catch me before long,
A jester faking he belongs.

And when the night stretched sharp and black,
I traced the cracks along my back.
This borrowed life, this patchwork skin
A quiet fraud, too loud to win,
Too full of ghosts to send them back.

Yet here I stand, unmasked, unmade,
A tattered soul they can't evade.
I own the cracks, I claim the scar,
I wander listless, yet still I spar
I am the blade they never stayed.

I still recall the altar’s glow,
The incense thick with whispered grace.
I swung the smoke in practiced flow,
A boy who knew his sacred place.

Some ties are silent, undefined,
Not marked by vows or chapel walls.
Yet still they weigh upon the mind,
A yearning wrapped in sacred calls.

I question God, yet hold Him near,
Though reason pulls me from that shore.
My heart believes through doubt and fear,
And aches for truths I can't ignore.

So let me speak what priests won’t bless,
That love, when real, still feels divine.
And maybe God, in quietness,
Still lights a candle next to mine.