The purpose of living has always been up for debate.
It’s always been humans making use of their lives
to ponder the reasons why we’re alive at all.
It’s always about knowing
the “why” and the “how,”
in the process failing to
see the “should” and the “will.”
It’s easy for us to agree that
the world is a canvas;
malleable and flexible,
blank and waiting—yet
we’re so desperate to find an answer to our reality
that we forget that
there’s more to existing than clawing at
infertile soil and dormant seeds, more than
painting our own rain and sunshine, more than sobbing
on our knees to marble and gold.
It’s ironic when you think about it,
there’s not much more to life
than going through the motions
and yet
there’s so much more to life
than just existing. They always say
that there’s a difference between living
and existing,
but when was the last time anyone actually stopped to realise it?

I
I am what you see - what you perceive and
what you cannot fathom
I am multilayered but not as shallots
I am black, I am white and
everything grey
I am Now - Yesterday and Then
I am Tomorrow
I am the cave dweller, a migrant
I am digenous

I’ve seen too much, held behind these eye lids.
I've learned that the dark is no place I can rest.
It shows me everything that hides in its corners.
With Every stubborn pulse beating in my Worn-out chest.

With Every stubborn pulse beating in my Worn-out chest.
I flinch at kindness like it's gonna turn around and bite.
Because most smiles that I've seen were a mask that betrayed.
I keep my room much brighter when its night—

My body is here, I think. Maybe in part.
But the rest is somewhere else I left. unclaimed.
I built shrines of silence inside my own heart,
Where I hid my crying echo, and gave it, its own name.

When someone asks me why I never go to sleep,
A version of me steps in front of me to lie.
Cause sleep is a place that's just way too deep,
For someone who truly feels like they have already died.


Someone is always moving underneath my pale skin—
I'm nothing but an actor mouthing someone's borrowed truth.
I close up and I break as the thoughts are swarming in.
And I choke on even the quietest taste of their proof.

I stay wide awake thinking pain is gonna pass.
But it doesn't. It stays here and lives in my bed.
My comfort is a broken window of shattered glass—
But it never makes me try to fix my ever-shattered head.

I taught myself how to speak from underneath pauses,
And how not to feel, with my own blood and meds.
You say that love exists? Then show me where the clause is,
Saying “nothing that will live will be punished when it's dead.”

I almost opened up my heart once. And it burned.
Not with fire, just with that light I knew I shouldn’t touch.
You say we're worth trust? Let's see if it returns,
If you abandon it like faith and leave it cold and untouched.

I wish I knew how not to leave my own trail.
But my presence cuts the air, and I know I can't pretend.
I stitch it back together, each time that I inhale,
My own conscious effort just to draw my next breath.

These eyes must stay open. And That’s the only rule.
So, I'm counting every crack in the wall and in the door.
My heartbeats break open. My blood is in a pool.
Not so much now, but that used to mean more.

Might as well nail the door, I know I'll never unseal.
Or the self in the mirror would start turning away.
Cause to truly open up, would just make it too real.
And nothing real has ever entered my life to stay.

So never again, will I close tired my eyes.
You can Keep your strong skin. I will keep the scars.
I keep swallowing locks, in my chest they reside.
And never again, will I open my heart.

A quiet
young woman
in a library
reading books
with diagrams
of bomb shelters
and *** positions

She's thinking
of her future