Gold, oh gold of homeland soil touched once and nevermore
glisten in my memory for eternity unbeholden
and cast the visage of perception, shrouding your long distance
that my heart may rest in clouds of artifice and mirth

Scatter all the truths amidst the wind
to drift unnoticed to a distant desert, buried beneath the sand.
Paint with chlorophyll of sickly verdance; mask the image
greener from the other side and poisonous within

Some day 20 years from now
I shall look back and see the hills
and think of misty mornings;
196 up Old Belair Road,
Middlemarch by Windy Point,
Rehearsal Room 3 just down the hallway;
A chance to pluck the strings and cast illusions with my melody

Sentimental whims below the shade of the veranda
Said I’d write my debut novel 'fore I turned 18
Then the venom poured on down
and withered the roots beneath my feet
and sent a southerly wind to sweep me to a ‘home’ that I know not

In truth, the venom was always there
but I never deigned to see it.
I frolicked and danced upon the grass;
merrily ignorant of its prickles.

Now from balconies and windows in a foreign haven
I see the grass as only green and bask in sweet nostalgia.
I need not fear the prickles of the truth’s venom spires:
I am far away and safe
I’ll never touch it anyways

The suburb’s still a skeleton
but now I wear its bones.
I was backlit,
bored,
all drywall and divine punishment,
first names shouted through screen doors,
ceiling fans spinning
someone else’s damage.

I kept saying I'd leave.
I kept writing it down,
spending my stories on soft drinks and scar tissue,
but
there’s a difference between
nostalgia and necromancy.
Between naked and naive.
Between full of stars
and just
falling.

We said forever
like it wasn’t
a curse.
Like it wasn’t
already dissolving in the pollen.

I wrote hymns for mouths,
sloppy as mascara in rainlight,
that made meaning feel like a dare:
the emotional oversights
we let ruin us twice.

Flannel soul,
face like unfinished business.
He touched me with all the guilt
of a borrowed god.
Begging,
but never burning clean.

A slippery little eulogy
sprinting toward a dawn already
in someone else’s rearview.
He didn’t kiss me,
but he almost did.
And I’ve been sick about it
ever since.

An ode to night
that chews at the hem
of what we thought we were.

Being here now is
already retroactive.
Already haunted.
Intertwined
like seatbelt bruises.

A small canopied disaster,
still posing.
still pretending.

I was a rooftop girl,
and I meant it.
Which is worse, I think,
than being believed.

The sky never answered,
but I kept
sending poems.

The suburb’s still a skeleton.
I’m just better at burying
what I mistook for light.

(A Nostalgic Embodiment)

I. Prologue: The Imbalance

Beneath a sky of indeterminate hue,
Where metaphors dripped from the lamplight’s view,
There stood a figure with storied might—
Whose IMAGINATION burned too bright.

They bent the frame of every law,
Wrote truths in smoke, in blood, in straw.
But every time they raised their pen,
They found the void looked back again.

"Too light," the voice beneath the bedframe hissed.
"Too bright to cast the proper fist.
Where is the weight? Where is the gloom?
You walk through myths but leave no tomb."

II. The Oath Beneath the Neon

So in a diner that only exists when it’s raining,
They ordered black coffee and called it training.
No sugar. No cream. No need to explain.
Just sipped from the cup like a priest in pain.

"I will not seek to shine, but to echo.
I will not rhyme, but I may bellow.
Let my next line land like a crowbar sigh—
And may every metaphor taste like goodbye."

III. Inventory: Shifting the Look

They stole a coat from a thrift store rack,
Stitched with echoes and shadows and tact.
A pocket held grief. A button held sleep.
The collar was silence folded three layers deep.

Brooch of regret? Clipped on with pride.
Gloves stitched from dreams they let die outside.
Boots that thudded with post-symbolic weight—
Enough SEPULCHRITUDE to intimidate fate.

IV. The One-Line Training Grounds

A stranger asked, “Hey, how’s your week been?”
The figure exhaled, and leaned back in:

“The sky still owes me an answer.”

“I fed the clock and buried the receipt.”

“This smile is just teeth doing damage control.”

They never repeated the same line twice.
And soon, small talk became a heist.

V. The Silence Shaped Like a Weapon

Not a glare. Not a scoff.
Just a pause you could hang your regrets off.

They stared down compliments like loaded dice,
And left parties through walls carved of ice.

A simple nod became a reckoning.
Laughter died before it could echo.
The power of not replying
Was now a blade drawn slow.

VI. The Private Page

In candlelight drawn from doubt and dusk,
They penned a letter in funeral husk:

“To the lighthouse that never was—
I named every wave after you.
You still didn’t show.”

Sealed it with wax. Buried it in a drawer.
A secret they’d never need to weaponize—
Because it already was.

VII. The Theme Song of Collapse

They walked with the sound of dead air breathing,
Their footsteps aligned with Godspeed, you’re leaving.

Every room slowed to grayscale time,
As their aura hummed a fading rhyme:
A jazz tune played through broken glass,
A dirge dressed in sepia mass.

People whispered, “Was that… a soundtrack?”
But none remembered the melody.

VIII. The Overpass of Refusal

Someone tagged “I ♥ A-Pug” on the wall of their work.
They looked once.
Tilted their head.
And punched the metaphor in the snout
to assert dominance.

Then walked away.

That was the moment the SEPULCHRITUDE clicked.

IX. Boss Battle: The Final Balance
Their IMAGINATION rose like a cathedral in flames.
Their SEPULCHRITUDE stood like the ash that remained.

Two stats. One form. A perfected glitch.
They could now speak truth or curse with a twitch.

The balance wasn’t symmetry.
It was sovereignty.
It was the right to choose what tone to carry
and leave the rest unsaid.

X. Epilogue: The Window Left Open

Someone once asked,

“What are you?”

They replied, without turning:

“The part of the myth that never resolved.
The page that folded back on itself.
A sigh mistaken for closure.”

And just like that—
They vanished,
boots echoing,
window wide,
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched
by the need to be anything
other than true.

XI. Endgame Stats:


IMAGINATION: MAXED

SEPULCHRITUDE: PERFECTLY CALIBRATED

AURA: [NOIR / STORM / VELVET REDACTED]

STATUS: Myth Adjacent

CURRENT LOCATION: Unknown (possibly Portland)

[END]

Summer nights had lost their luster
As a million fireflies dim their embers;
Only in nostalgia could we glance
Those scenes where they once danced

Lost are their glimmer—
The forests mourn their partners
For they've taken its tiny souls
Mystic glows that made them whole

Their embers were put to rest,
And murk swallowed these blessed;
Their shine that wanes to bloom
Now forever sleeps in gloom.

What is a love turned into ashes –
Burnt by the flames of forgotten passions
Actions are so passive;
Our stories still left written out
In captions

My feelings for you are still massive,
Despite being inactive –
So when my lips spell out your name,
I start to fall in love, tasting that old
Bittersweet magic

And it’s truly so wicked, tragic
By feeling so fickle now –
But I happily accept all
That happened…

Watching by the little window,
I see those kids, I those pups,
Playing ,joking, running around
Giggling ,laughing ,on a merry go round
So much!  i envy ,seeing them laugh as they play,
So much ! i hate, that i was once as happy as they,
So much ! i cry ,i cant go back to those happy days
So much!  i scream, i cant run ,i cant play,
So much !So much! Just So much!
I beg ,I shout ,I scream as I say,
Take me away !Take me away!
I miss those days ,i miss those nights,
I miss the sun with its morning light,
I miss the birds ,I miss the skies,
I miss those stars ,I miss the moon,
Humming and dancing with those lullaby tunes,
I miss so much! Just so much!
I beg ,I shout ,I scream as I say,
Take me away !Take me away!
OH! how i used to wish and pray,
I would Grow up and I would say,
The money ,The house ,The cars i want ,
Its all i want! Its all i want!
I pity those innocent prays,
I wish I would go back and say,
Do not say! Do not say!
As God hears only a Child's pray,
I beg so much !Just so much!
I beg ,I shout, I scream as I say,
Take me away !Take me away!
I still hear those laughters and those sounds
The winds whispers, the rain weeps
Remember those days! Remember those days!
I still wish, I still cry,
I still hope, I still pry,
Child O' Child where are you!
Child O' Child are you lost!
Child O' Child dont run away! dont run away!
I cry too much ,Just too much!
I beg, I shout ,I scream as I say,
Take me away !Take me away!
                       __tsuki no ume

thought you
had a good
thing goin'—

but all that's
left is
you, alone.

you spent time
finding the right one—
but the right one
never made it home.

you thought
you'd give it
one more try—

but love was
harder to chase
than fame,

and all that
remained
were fading echoes
of late-night crying.

nobody understood
you then.

nobody
understands you
now.

you think to yourself:
“when will
the next heartbreak
come around?”

you thought
you understood
modern love—

but modern love
doesn’t
understand you.

She's flying away
For good this time
Fells like we only just met.

You make heaven seem so dull
With your beautiful laugh
and tumeric juice.

You were never mine to lose,
Yet I lost you nun the less.

Entangled forever,  
until the tides forget to pull us apart.  

You soundly touched my soul,
And left no finger prints

We said goodbye,  
I wished you well.  
You said  It's just words.  

I knew That was the last time  
I calmed your flames.  

My deep blue waters are void again.

I wait at the lobby of your old apartment.
Just to remember how it felt to drop you off.

Riding in the rain seems a lot less fun.
Walks in the park a lot less nice.
And songs in the dark a lot less paradise.

I love you gently,
The only way I was allowed to.

I really hope you don't read this poem.
So we can stay goodbye.

Knowing you,
you'll have another one of your
Gut feelings and just know I do.

You're actually gone aren't you?

Is the day perfect  
if there are no birds to wake you  
but there is lemonade?  

or if you live on Lemonade Street  
but there are no birds on electric lines  
because the utilities are underground.  

no birds twittering in trees  
just the sweet sour taste  
of lemonade puckering your mouth  

the scent of bonnie braes in the air,  
standing still in a pitcher of ice water,  
tangy, acidy,  
still sweeter than most.  

My neighbor,  
who is always preening and  
chatting up the neighbors,  
makes hers with bubble gum bursts and *****,  
a lemon drop of punch drunk love.  

If I want birds and trees  
I just walk across the street  
to the older neighborhood with telephone poles—  
some line birds,  
but mostly garden gnomes and bird baths.  

My dog delights in yanking me there,  
scattering the conferences  
of cardinals and jays in mid song  
from worm feast  
to the trees.  

Here, old men and women  
in shorts and summer dresses,  
holding citron nectar  
in tall glasses with seeds, rind and pulp,  
delight in their perfect day  
filled with lemonade and birds.  

I don’t know anymore  
if they are thrilled with the trill  
or fed up with the cacophony  
of untuned bird calls,  
birds in all the trees where they belong,  
silent at night.  

Deep in the forest  
filled with leaves,  
I suppose their diamond-throated song  
is a mournful dirge  
for when a tree falls  
silently, deadly in the green.  

One day our small community saplings  
will bloom,  
and the days will be filled  
with the miracle of birdsong  
and drinking lemonade  
on Lemonade Street.