Step by step, up the rail—
submission in the climb,
villain’s fanfare in my ears.

Each step, something more.
Each reach, something less.

The key turns.
Nothing unlocks.
Failure is a state of being,
complicity just the cost.

We wept, we adored,
we mistook motion for meaning.
I keep climbing—
not toward,
just away.

I keep rhyming,
like it’ll change the shape of things,
like desolation sways if you hum the right tune.

Promise kept.
Hearts torn.
Is that not the trade?

I might be dead,
for all you know.
Or just misplaced,
like a ghost in a machine
that still says your name.

Just be well.
(Or whatever it is
that keeps you from looking back.)

Judging my safety
Like collapsing sandcastles
Rough-built at high tide

Feeble foundations
Based on assumptions
Freak waves waiting

Only recently
I learnt that not everyone
Always feels afraid

Turn gently inward
To ask whether I’m okay
Quietly observe

The body holds the answers
Truer than the pliant mind

Tell me, is it worth appreciating
the silence that will at some point
replace you and the fog
of your scarlet breath?

Cured of my destructive longing,
I am falling apart
like a house of cards,
built in a whisper.

I am trying to free myself
from last year's sky, but I know
that you are still guarding my soul.

Locked in my own shadow,
I raise a toast
to a happier world.
When the last bell falls silent,
I will relinquish
my freedom and forget about loneliness.

An hour will be born in me
that knows neither light nor penance.
One morning I realized
that victory
was not dedicated to me.

I will open my mouth,
close the window. I am not afraid
of tomorrow's illusions,
of another painless evening.

I made a mistake
in my calculations again,
completing the morning prayer.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful --
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Driving light, welcome splendor,
Eternal fight, radiant tender—
Gavel of shadow, a dark fist,
Ignorant hope, dismissed.

Youth, ephemeral fire,
Distractions, desire,
Carrot, stick; baited,
'Destiny'; we waited.

Ash, born anew,
Tired stories askew,
Knowledge ignored,
'Self' sold in stores.

In doubt, I find a shifting ground,
Where voices crack, but truth is found.

I stand between the joy and sorrow,
A witness to a strange tomorrow.
The self I knew fades into air,
What I become, I'm not yet aware.