When rights are taken,
people stand alone.
The world moves around them,
but they are outside,
unseen, unheard.

Dignity crumbles.
Inclusion becomes a distant idea,
participation a closed door.
They are left with nothing but silence,
a void where their voice should be.

Education, healthcare, justice—
these are not gifts,
they are foundations.
Without them,
the ground gives way.

Isolation grows,
not just in the mind,
but in the spaces between people.
It spreads,
weakening the ties that hold society together.

They are here,
but they are not.
Their absence is felt,
but not acknowledged.
The system turns,
blind to the cracks it creates.

How long can this last?
How many must stand alone
before the world notices,
before it stops,
and begins to rebuild?

my grudges relish
the taste of isolation;
bitter by the day.

Kicked down.
Cold floor. Breath thinner than the air.
Get up.
Hands reach, no grip.
Alone, lost again.
Crying echoes back to silence.
Floods of tears—
no ark, no warmth, just noise.

Thrown down.
Fallen,
too many times.
Get up, try again.
But the hands,
they never pull me up.
Just flickers of light—
brief, empty.
Alone. Lost.
I shout, but no one hears.
A flood of tears,
they turn their backs.
Flee.
Craving warmth,
but it's just cold silence.

Craving safety, security.
A place to breathe.
But the love that’s offered,
it’s conditional.
Harsh words.
Poking, pain,
no softness.
Empty arms,
no warmth.
Alone again,
lost in the night.
I’m down here,
on the cold floor.
Don’t leave me here—
please.
Not again.
Afraid.
Empty.

A burden.
A disappointment.
That’s all I am.
A ghost, never seen,
only felt.
I love, yet all I get is hate.
Thrown back at me,
cold, sharp.
No warmth for the lost,
just more silence.
Another night on the floor,
cold,
alone.

The darkness is heavy.
I can’t rise.
Maybe this is where I belong,
buried beneath the weight.
The coldness, the grime.
No line thrown.
Alone, I sink deeper.
This feels like home—
empty, silent,
a place no one calls their own.
Another night,
heart breaking,
again.

I’m sorry.
For whatever I’ve done,
to push you away.
I can't believe it turned out like this.
Is this the end?
Another night,
more tears,
more silence.
I only wanted a place,
to belong,
to feel seen.
But I guess that’s too much to ask.

All the words
that never left my mouth
creep through my veins
filling the hollows of my mind
and my lungs with stone
encasing the very essence of me
in lead

weighing me down
as the murky depths
of a world
that never knew
I was drowning
beckons

On days like this, I am reminded of a feeling once foreign to me
A concept I’d only caught from books and from movies.
One that crushes yet contains no mass
That cripples heart and brain alike yet bears no blade.

It is the bitter, biting brutality of winter with no fire nearby to curl up to
Nipping at the heart and leaving it crisp with melancholy.
It is a plague which I seem to have regretfully caught
Despite having recently become so very aware of how to use its cure.

The girl across the hall opens her door and produces a weary, sigh with her exit
Perhaps a plea for an ear to listen or another to exist with.
She passes by my open doorway silently, contradicting herself
Our pleas for a social volley cast together into the blizzard.

I imagine she feels that same apprehension; hesitation
Or perhaps she had something to do.
The simple smile of another among the thousands here
Would be an ember of joy sufficient to set my hearth alight for days.

I crave that warmth like few things I have craved before
So close by, yet more scarce than it’s ever been.
Chatter was once my sun, and I basking endlessly below
How I yearn for summer in this raging storm.

i lied about the exorcism--
that neon ghost
still haunts my phone
and though all of us are silent
you sing my tinnitus till the storms get back.

you don't know it's been raining all week
because i never told you;
i'm so scared of spirits and spiders
and weathering small-talk--
your sun and my curtain-clouded bedroom.

in a sunpatch on your floor,
i dreamt of leaping off the grid
and landing back in lake hylia a hero;

now i only dream of daytime drinks,
a summer solitude as dull as the ends of my hair
'cause i can't even throw back my dad's ninety proof
without the sun in my eyes

so the truth is
between zelda and zookeeping
i've been seancing on the dusty carpet
arranging myself around album booklets and ***** shirts

and maybe i couldn't help it

maybe i lit a couple candles by your name
not thinking you'd think of me
or think to shine solar snapshots onto my pillow--
a presence to make me breathless
enough that i can't
***** them out

and they keep me up at night

got caught up talking
balked through the window and fell through the back door
umbrella still in bloom

left rings of condensation as footsteps
and also frostbite in 60 degree weather
and also footsteps for nobodies to follow
freaked out by stale nature
valley-cracked teeth
translucent petals poking through nag champa clouds

lost spider solitaire
twenty-one times in a row

lost all the gaba napping in classrooms
and spinning circles around itself
untuned cerebellum in atrophy against the spins

lost it
won an advil liqui-gel
and quickly quit:
jumped off the peak of its dose-response curve
into the pool of a hallucinogenic july

doesn’t matter:
komorebi’s turned apocalyptic;
sunset's turned subvision

now you make shadows on the mirror and wet-floor signs on the tile
get caught in spiderwebs not a foot outside your bedroom
blast faith through android speakers suffocating in her comforter
drown your plants in ***** water

never heard a silver lining
only eat up deserts
for the cacti that’ll propagate later in your throat:

a seventy-five cent zinnia’s last whiskey-driven photosynthesis
rootbound

just like that the pretty girl in my dreams
disappeared freed my sheets to let them
suffocate as usual and i stayed there
facing the ceiling with cymbals’ collisions under my pillow

and for a haze i stayed
still and subsisting on spit and spider mites
like the sea wasn’t swallowing anything
till i was ninety percent salt and crystallized
breathing out dusty alphabet soup into the aether

like anyone with a disdain for capital letters
my circle sends its love along with mutual virtue parasitism
in distress beacons pinged through a dead battery and twitching fingers
and you know it’s for the best

no falling out of bed or breakfasts till the oasis is complete
under construction in the dusty pillowcase i call home
down the street from the abandoned asylum where i learned
mouth too dry and lungs too sharp

a shriveled cactus with paper spines