She waltzed in wearing lavender -

not the bruised blue hue of dried buds,

but the soft, delicate shade that makes you forget

poison can be pastel

and alive.

The cerulean seas of her eyes

surveyed me with a crocodilian smirk

an undertow ready to clench and drag

for its own amusement

She smiled like silk,

shiny, delicate, costly

as she handed me a cedar latched spice box.

Inside

red cords, scissors

pressed flowers so fragile they'd shatter

with a whisper

and a single letter sprinkled

with cayenne

sealed with red lipstick

too heavy to open.

"Time doesn't belong to you," She whispered

like it was a flirtation

like my hours were hers

to unwrap

to discard

She kissed my questioning forehead

soft, sealing, dismissive,

answered nothing

just reached for my hands

with perfectly manicured cold fingers

I gasped awake

my mouth full of cinnamon

dry and hot

a goodbye I didn't choose caught in my throat

that I prayed I'd never have to speak.

She's reappeared now and again

in the corners of mirrors,

fond of the elevator's reflective surround

and the hammered copper coffee jar

that stays open like a lifeline.

always twirling her ashen ringlets

waiting? warning?

When I glimpse her, I open the lace covered windows

and let the sun reclaim the shadows -

until even her perfume forgets my name.

It doesn’t rain —
it weeps through a broken mask,
the sky unzipping its stitched-up grief
and letting sorrow bleed down like silk.

Rain drips like rosary beads
counting sins backwards,
washing blood from sidewalks
but not from time.

Animals whisper first —
fur quivering with prophecy.
Dogs howl at ghosts we pretend aren’t there.
Cats dissolve into shadow
like smoke slipping through cracks in logic.

People sleep,
wrapped in their own warmth,
not knowing the storm outside
is the Earth mourning itself.

Some cry beneath the clouds.
Some grin like broken clocks.
Some dissolve —
quiet as paper in water.

They say every night ends —
but not every soul waits long enough
to see the ink fade.
Some vanish,
not because they gave up —
but because the veil closed too tight.

And no one reads
the pages they became.

I fear a ghost has taken hold of me;
I feel its presence when I tend to wake
From eerie dreams that blur reality,
A haunting feeling that I cannot shake.
It steals from me the things I once enjoyed,
And leaves an empty feeling in their place,
As if my life were something to be toyed,
Then left alone and broken in its case.
I'm at the mercy of an angry kid
Who died alone, afraid and far too young.
Too scared to face his fears, he only hid,
And choked upon the words stuck on his tongue.
Shackled to him, I try but can't escape;
To bear the burden of his sins, my fate.