Something lives inside me
that is neither flesh nor soul.
It does not weep,
it waits,
feeding in silence,
gnawing the marrow
from within.

This is no sorrow,
sorrow has a voice.
This is the hush of a crypt,
the suffocation of earth
piled on a coffin
that still contains breath.

My smiles are glass shards,
arranged carefully
to mimic life,
but behind them
is a theater of ruin.
Each word I speak
is dragged bleeding
from a throat of rust.

Sleep brings no refuge,
only corridors of ash,
mirrors that fracture,
rooms without doors.
I wake not to light,
but to the weight
of another endless night
disguised as day.

The pain is rootless,
yet everywhere,
a shadow with no body,
a plague with no cure.
It is a name I cannot utter,
a hymn without sound,
a wound without blood.

I walk among the living,
but the grave has already
learned my shape.
And still,
I keep moving,
a funeral procession of one,
carrying the ghost
of who I was
to nowhere.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

I have a room inside me that never learns to stay lit –
the bulbs hum like old refrigerators, tired and polite.
It is not only sadness; it is the slow settling of stone,
the placing of a palm on a wound I cannot name.

My smile is a borrowed coin pressed into the mouth of a beggar,
metal cool and unfamiliar. I practice saying fine –
the syllables are tidy, a drawer snapped shut against the dark.
Talking feels like choosing which limb to cut off first.

Mornings arrive like tax bills: inevitable and cruel.
I open my eyes and the world is a ledger of small violences –
the sun a pale creditor, the coffee bitter and obedient.
Breathing is a job I clock in for and instantly forget why.

There is a weight that knows the map of my bones better than I do,
it presses where directions used to be, flattens neighborhoods of hope.
Pain has become a general ledger: no line item, only balance
always a number red and endless, always due.

Sometimes I imagine carving a window into that room –
letting a sliver of weather in to see if weather remembers me.
But the shutters are welded with sentences I did not finish,
and the key is small and lost in the pocket of some other life.

The worst is the geography of it: no sharp edge to point at,
no bruise with a date, no neat explanation for why the rain keeps staying.
Only the knowing that whatever I touch comes away colder,
and I learn, slowly, how to fold myself into an acceptable silence.

If I could name the hurt, I’d dress it in words and parade it out –
but language is thin clothing for a storm this old.
So I wrap myself in softer lies and hand them to strangers,
say I'm fine and watch them believe me because they want to.

Tonight, I will tread the house of my own chest and count the rooms
the kitchen where hunger goes to sleep, the attic of all the almosts,
the cellar where my laughter ferments into objects I no longer own.
I will not find an answer. I will find the weight again, patient and exact.

Existing has become empty, a hollow rhythm,
a clock with no hands.
The worst is not knowing where the wound begins,
only that it’s everywhere –
a bruise spread across my soul, aching without edges,
bleeding without proof.

It hurts,
always hurts,
and I cannot name it.
I only know
it never leaves.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

my heart is under
attack and i
am hanging by
a thread

i try to cope,
and now i
choke on words
i should regret

i set my boundaries,
and now i feel
imaginary

like an unfinished
painting, the brush
lays there just dripping
reds and blues

just looking for a
different palette,
a different hue,
to give me a clue

it’ll change for
the best

now my heart is
under arrest

and i know life
is full of surprises
and tests

the sun will rise,
and the clouds will
lift

i have to keep my
spirits up

open my eyes,
and hope i won’t
collapse—
but rise instead
under the stress

complexities of us:

the unfamiliarity to it
comes off as uncomfortability
in the beginning.
but then i look back,
and i stare, zooming in and out,
grasping—this is the reality.
suddenly, it doesn't feel so bad;
looks okay, feels alright.
only, please, let me keep it all hidden
for a bit longer, bouts of while perhaps,
just for tonight.

what's the perfect opening?
to begin with it—
is it picking out a line from a list of prompts,
or playing music when the shadows swarm?
i believe it's hope and faith misplaced,
out of scope, of happiness and of exacerbation.
some words come to me,
like someone in my head plucked them out
of a locked away, hidden library.
and there are sentences, feelings
that are yet to find their place in a dictionary.
so i hold, and put forward
this ultimate piece stitched carefully.
a proclamation, if you must—
i hope you don't deny
that it indeed was poisoned, misspoken gust.

she's the precious kind
do you mind?





galaxy of masks:

masks upon masks,
just so the real ones are never visible.

where do we plan on heading,
hiding who we are
and watching ourselves disappear?
why cement the original, the real,
to show an illusion people'd like?
we lose our own shadows of individualism,
and still become whatever they continue to despise.

actors are lucky—
can be anything they want.
and even though it's all fake,
that's their job.
people dismiss them,
preach the characters they own.
they can become anyone,
and i can't even be myself.
now that's just forlorn.
they get applauded,
while i get cremated.
i do just the same—
they earn, i protect.
they flash, i burn.

and when you think you're late
that's when you're actually late.
so easy for them to say,
like they didn't need to struggle to live.
despite it all, they continue to pretend,
and so do i,
that i like them.
the smile that can hide everything for me
is something i'm thankful for.
is this the gratitude i'm meant to journal down,
or a selfish gift that i grew up with?
should i not talk about it?





cosmic revelations:

we're all stars.
stars on a big star,
surrounded by many more,
creating galaxies, preaching astronomy.
what were we made for?

i often don't know what to wish for.
is it health, happiness, or taste of the unknown?
so i stand in front of the lords,
hoping to find some quiet.
and peace does exist,
only it slithers away, as if washed off by the mighty.
i bow down, offer my all,
say i'm here, let me keep it whole.
i glance through the mirrors,
little somethings at the back of my throat.
adrenaline promises the thrill
of what living should have felt like—
if life wasn't so dead, furthermore.
the only moments i feel it pulse,
the blood thrums under my veins.
it sulks.

the sun took birth
after a collision and collapse
of a molecular cloud—term it star.
the brightest in the sky right now,
a miracle, like us.
and in your life,
as the biggest star of all,
yet you choose to fall down
after the slightest push.
wear and tear and suddenly we're misunderstood.
the world could end,
the galaxy could burst open
any given day—
you'd wake up, turn into dissipated matter.
and you worry about
that one thing,
or a list of multiple,
and claim this is the end
of your life and your empirical?
loathsome towards the sky,
have you seen how it looks during the night?

observe it through documentaries:
such a small piece of matter,
surrounded by so many
that are alike, yet destruct and differentiate.
even if they don't understand,
you could always.

it's only at a distance that spring seems green.
up close, it's floral, filled with allergies—
and they don't always mention
the bouts of issues that it comes with.
it's only at a distance
that it seems worth boasting.
does spring even exist,
or are we permanently a part of stark winters?
then why does it always melt off the skin—
all that we hide, and all that we wear?
mayflies live for a day,
it's their whole lifetime,
while you waste away.

when you drift through the night,
speeding up, watching the stars align,
you can almost make out how it isn't all too real.
surreality exists in the traffic lights
and cars drifting by.
it's bound to stay all up in my head this time,
so i need not write about how it was to kneel
and claim enjoyment when it lasted for seconds.
i've lived enough—enough to understand
when i've become unwanted.

from lorde's david,
to laufey's lover girl,
the kiss of venus,
and summing up the life of the one—
everyone in this party's a vampire.
so i've put on their teeth,
ready to bite.
except mine barely break through skin,
while theirs leave marks along a rhythm.
they can tell when it's a mess within your head,
but they wouldn't do anything.
make it a ghost town.
they'd **** the marrow of life.
like the blood moon, you'll be looped into hellfire.
i didn't even know how bad it stung,
until i saw the red turning black—
all over my arms, now they account for places.
all the spots that shone the brightest
are now dimmed.
brown spots, burnt.

a person with many thoughts makes fewer mistakes—
that's just a lie, cause the thoughts give out stories
of the what ifs, and of all that is fake.
and i look back a lot.
most of my own
count as actions questionable,
even though i've thought about it a hundred times—
enough for my head to explode.

the tale of nonchalance leaves me bereft.
isn't it like—
you're afraid to be read,
cause what if they don't like what they see?
but what if them not liking you
makes you dislike yourself—
and that's all that you believe.
the moon has craters.
up close, it looks like a giant ball, imperfect,
filled with marks and depths.
and yet every night you sit,
praying, admiring
the same moon, the same hollows that you carry.
if you could preach self-acceptance,
then maybe you wouldn't grieve
someone else's ignorance.
the codependence lies within yourself.
they could or could not—
you're left with you.
that's all you got.
so live a little, baby,
even if you make mistakes.
if they love you,
they'll correct and still accept you the same.





weeds of hope:

often saving up stories, reels, images
that i'd like to keep in my memory.
i don't read it all,
instead promising that one day
i'll either use them
or take inspiration to write my own.
except all that i've learnt,
the crazy crashing innocence—
there is hope within,
even though i might not see.
i could say i wouldn't want to wake up,
i'd want to sleep forever.
but all the saved up diaries,
waiting to be written into,
and through all the saved, shared, linked posts—
hope exists.
doesn't really show in the way it must,
but in other ways,
like saving the cheesiest bite
for the last take.

hope is beautiful,
even though it is never sure—
like the real home is with the right person,
the walls decoration, accessories on bodies of them all.

you don't look back—
that's the key to keep going.
but i do it often,
a way of letting go
and moving.
i've looked back,
when i was sure no one would be waiting.
and i saw tiny figures in the mist of dark—
they were leaving.
for the first time in a long time,
it didn't feel like the ultimate ending,
yet it was the closure for me.
done, complete.

i've been keeping a track of all my greens—
the plants, the flowers, and how they stopped blooming.
the prettiest of extras, weeds they call them.
i watched them grow, unsure if i should crop them.
now they've taken over,
grown to heights the plants could never.
and they seem more in place than the originals—
except in the long run you and i both know
they'll ****, no matter how we look.
weeds have to be removed.

i removed the weeds off my plants today.
prettiest, shadowy, soft, almost as if they belonged.
and now they lie on my desk,
drying away through as the sun sets.
perhaps they'll be stacked among the pages
of my books, as bookmarks, memories and stages,
as people who've drifted in closer and walked away.

even though they weren't meant to stay,
the weeds gave me an idea:
phantoms do stay,
so the leaves as well.
and they might not have belonged in the plants,
but they did grow, and it isn't all too bad.
the plants are alive still.
the flowers might bloom again.

If I place my unvarnished self before you
The bruises I do not hide
The hungers I cannot starve
The storms that refuse their leash

Or would you look at me
And see the ruin of what you thought you loved
While I stand here
Knowing the ruin was always  me ?