Ridgehead
Barreleye
Bristlemouth
Loosejaw
Daggertooth

The names he was called
The identities he became

Things of that nature run deep
And crush like the depths of the sea

I sat on the edge of the bed.
You smiled.
I am your daughter,
But words mean to you
Something else.

I took your hand,
Telling you I haven’t slept for a year.
I write reflections,
Tame the voices behind my left ear,
Assemble thoughts about the darkness.

I pour a warm, salty liquid
That burns the skin – it doesn’t moisturize.
It helps me,
This pseudo-therapy.
I hide behind my nickname,
So that no one holds me accountable
For what I’m supposed to be.

You also sat up at night,
You read books.
You carried hidden sadness,
I stick a smile on my lips.

I hug people who carry Egregores.
You and I,
we are not afraid of the night.
Your hand is cold.
You smile,
You put together syllables into strange words.

You know that I matter to you.
I pretend to understand
What you wanted to say.

In a moment, it will get hard.
You’ll start screaming like a little boy,
Or again you’ll wait
Until this state of life passes you.

Life?
It’s a kind of space
Where people, because of fear
Bite and scratch
Like frightened, rabid dogs –
And then soothe it
With controlled tenderness.

I sit with you on the edge of the couch
And I think:
We write with the left hand.
We are beings of the night.
Our path was shared –
In fear, to protect a small piece of “I”.

I fear I’ll lose language.
I desperately defend myself against silence.
I dream of non-human languages.
I write words as if I wanted
To cast spells on reality –
Still, it’s not enough.
The anesthesia stopped working.

One day, this will be the end,
Yet as long as I live,
I’ll be the naive one.
That’s what I want.

I choose sweet, sugar-coated hope,
With pink sprinkles,
Telling myself that he, she
Didn’t mean to trample –
Only life pushed them
Into that dark corridor.

My hope
Is not a soft blanket,
This is a heavy, tight helmet.

I dreamt this dream before I could speak it out loud,
Between the signifier and imperfect signified,
With all kinds of broken hours and promises never kept,
I tried transforming what was often said in the past.

This place would seem so real,
Made for me, trembling in the middle,
With small and growing earthquakes.
I wrote myself again—my little truths.

Looking for missing lines without wings,
Carrying stones inside my mind,
In tight, frayed bags from my beating heart,
without hope for a final insight.

Perhaps I just passed through the steam
Of a swirling, repetitive, chaotic dance,
Seeking tickets, carving an elusive imprint
With my mosaic in this human code.

Five minutes quietly slipped by.
My earned time vanished.
I had my moments going along the roadsides,
Avoiding the end of this poetic journey.

I stay wrapped in a heavy coat of suspicion.
I saw Moirés crafting another delusion.
I found a small reward in an addictive cliché,
To feel short relief from what I call my reality.

I remember what I did before,
Choosing every day not to cast a stone
Into the center of what I can’t grasp
With my breathing, human existence.
And this breath was enough.