The *** never worries about its shine,
but only if the chef can stir more than heat.
Good looks can season the eyes, but flavor
fades quickly if the soul isn’t fed.

Jewels on the counter don’t make a meal—
the scars of the pan prove it’s lived through fire.
A recipe isn’t written in gold, but in burns,
in the scrapes, and in hands that keep cooking.

So dress the kitchen however you please,
but know this: the worth of what you serve
is weighed in the scars you carry, not the shine
you polish.

And now I ask—
which kind of *** are you?

Is it worth walking the tightline of life
as a drunken trapeze artist— feeding on grass
from the greener side? We are gentle, grazing creatures,
trading paint against the rail fence, peering through
cracks at a better life, always just out of reach.
I meet the ceiling of my limits, hanging from the rafters
of myself. I face the wall as if it could talk back, as if
my skeletons could speak through the plaster of the
closet that hides them.

Beneath the roar in my chest, a lion would still cry—
but never in front of their pride, perhaps because
of pride. A new man, mane brushed clean, yet what
is new when the old still haunts, when it’s harder
to forget regret than to accept what must be accepted?
So I obliterate the past, declare death to the old self—
all the undone things, all the debts unpaid.

On the cards I’ve been dealt, I keep a poker face
for enemies. But I never play a hand just to impress;
I clean up my own mess, one move at a time.
Watch every step you take. This is life’s tightrope.

This is war!

Not with guns, not with flags, but with myself. Every scar,
every voice in my head is an enemy line I’ve crossed. I fight
with silence, I fight with scars, I fight with the version of me
that swore I’d never get this far.

From being a punching bag to punching back. But it’s hard
not to fall back—into old habits; retreating from myself,
and telling my reflection to fall back...

Headlights slice the black, brief flashes through the dark.
Shut my eyes over myself, let their auras pass like thanks.
To all who hurt me: I’ve grown from you all, see my thanks
and my exhaustion. I’m too tired of you all, to carry your
remarks, too deaf to listen to people who say you owe them all.

Between myself and a tertiary exterior: a third self waits—
the superior version of me, complete, unbroken.
Body, mind, and soul to show off to the outside world...
still searching. Thankfully, I’m on the right road.

Much worse than me are all the prior versions of myself,
all of them still stumbling through the riddle of identity.
Fate, destiny— both play me like a long lonely chord,
strumming my heartstring, a song both bitter & sweet;
truly the taste of a man’s casual defeat.

See if survival is a means to meet an end, then I’ve met
enough ends to know, each greeting feels like a farewell,
as each rise a false high that drags me lower still. And in
this place where I stand, this ground I call my own, are
the days life slowly feels like hell.

Much worse than me are the questions I can’t outrun:
do I hate myself, or do I hate the eyes that all watch me
through everyone else? “Oh, he sits on his ***, or he’s
someone just to chase ***,” they say— but truth is, I am
more of an *** to myself. Kicking myself for not doing
enough, and beating myself down for doing too much.

Much worse than me is the interference that shapes
me, this half-formed man that I keep trying to correct.
Incomplete, unfinished, still searching— as if figuring
it all out is not my burden alone, but it's the long road
of every man, he must walk.

I am no-one. Yet I feel everything.
I do everything. I am rewarded by no-one.
Tragedy? Nothing. I am owed nothing
but a fitting death.

To fish for dreams on the scales of my life,
weighing all options—faults already exposed,
a past made of glass: reflective. Fragile. And so
unforgiving.

To be credited as a modern writer, despite
my financial pressures. Swiping left on bait
too absurd to bite. My ID card? A license
to exist— plastic proof I belong to a world
that never asked for me.

Fate. Destiny. Whatever it is— tilts the odds.
I tilt back. Desperately balancing: one side,
my bank account. The other, my place. Truly
my full worth. Every moment I must make count.
And if the world won’t remember me, then let
my balance sheet of scars be the proof I existed.

sinking into cushions
i ask myself
is this silence
a wound
or a gift

my friends have vanished
into their own worlds
this is what love does
it swallows people whole

maybe the absence
is my reflection
me and the glowing screen
sharing secrets
until sleep

i whisper lies
humans were made
to be islands
i tell myself
and i try
to believe it

We can’t go back to the beginning.
If we had known the ending,
would we still be on this road?

But I understand —
you want to know what it’s like
to be far from home,
why I can’t sleep at night.

I understand.

You want to know
why I always order the same drink twice
at that bar on the corner.

I understand.

You want to know
what it’s like to stand
on the wrong side of the history.
And honestly,
there comes a moment
when you get used to it,
and it starts to feel right.

It’s okay.
I’m okay now.

But I appreciate the concern —
keep digging,
keep asking about my life,
and one day
you’ll know about me.

There’s a spark between your lips, and it lights mine
when we kiss— we’re a match: fighting against all
the ways we’ve tried to smother what we feel.
As the sun cuts through me, kissing my skin in
gold— but my tears taste like wine, and my hopes
lounge in the soft armchairs of dreams.

Now, I hate the silence when I’m left with myself—
scrolling through ghosts in my phone, each message
once charging me like a battery cell.

Now it’s just me, trapped in a cold heart's prison cell,
echoing for company, thinking of the days I was once
drowning  in a well. But all there’s left to say is a bitter,
shrugged,

                “Oh well.”

The passage of time flows oddly
It has twists and loops
and holes and leaps.
It has tolls and bridges
and it may even have a cheshire cat
waiting to guide.

Which path have you taken to get where you are?
You can only tell when you reminisce

You can only share with others if:
it has been documented
it has been recorded
it has been photographed
they were there with you

Time of to set the next chapter ablaze
What's lined up?
Who knows
But one thing is for sure

Soon enough,
you'll be warped into another time freeze
another time to reminisce
another trip down the rabbit hole

Dear IS,

Is it fair you hold the key to my drive— to make something, yet
make it too frightening to try? Your breath pretends to drift slow
in my ear, but beneath it, you’re clearing the field, planting seeds
of every fear you know will take root.

Is it the power lines I see wired from me to you— feeding your
hands as you siphon my strength, splitting my will from the things
I keep tucked deep in the vault of myself? As you arrange them like
weapons, calling each by name to remind me of the parts I’ve tried
to love but sometimes can’t.

Is it the way I urge, wish, and will to act— only for you to spool film
from my past, running old scenes like warnings until my courage
caves to your script? Your message is seen: as nothing moves unless
you approve.

Is that you, who rests on my chest like a stone, chastising, shrinking
me to the size of my doubts— small flaws made giant, slippery
floors of thought that tilt more than they ever should? Well… not
anymore. You don’t get to rule me, or write my rules.

Goodbye, Insecurity—as if I could ever feel secure in you.

Yours,
faithfully unfaithful,

Ex-companion.