Consider this: God once dreamed of a ladder made of eyelashes and climbed down into our ribs. He dreams there still, underneath our skin, where silence is imprisoned by breath. It’s unable to leave our lungs. Time drips backwards around him, like melted clocks. It clings to him. Never wanting to let go, it haunts him.

He never leaves—lingering in the soft machinery of becoming, staying through n...

I mistook preservation for peace, letting them stuff my sorrow with something that would never rot. Was it grief? Love? Or ashes that never forgot the shape of a flame?

Not only that, but I mistook their volcanic lullabies for a hush between my thoughts. I thought I was safe with the warmth, the laughter, the pain—but now? I seem to let them siphon out the color that resides in my memories—they ...

He was as quiet as an abandoned stadium overgrown with vines. Haunted, not by the crowd, but by the lack of noise — every vine being a whisper of what it once was.

The silence crept through the rusted bleachers, winding its way back to him, to his mind. Broken echoes encased his thoughts and he longed to elude them, but they settled in the hollowness of his chest. He couldn’t breathe. It was all...

One might say it’s cruel—others, though, agree with it. The fact that one needs to earn respect, not just give it. So, I bite the hand that feeds me, so maybe it’ll let me starve.

Because it’s easier to deal with hunger than humiliation. It’s easier to explain. Starvation makes sense. If you don’t eat, you die, right? It’s simple. No tricks or excuses.

But what about respect?

It’s uglier. It’s...

All the pretty angel boys are nothing but an afterthought, staining his taste buds like acidic lemonade. Coming in nightmares disguised as dreams—like burnt sugar left on one’s tongue—their laughter sharp and shrill. They try to bury themselves in the rot of his memory, leaving no room for thoughts.

Every day, he wakes with their fingerprints pressed deeply into the back of his eyes. It seems lik...

I don’t want to stick out like a weed in a field of wildflowers. A weed envying how their colors never apologize for being seen, yet I’m left pleading. Shrinking beneath the sun, curling inwards. I’m crying out for help, yet no one comes to comfort me. They go to the wildflowers as they bloom without shame, without hesitation. The breeze even seems to favor their petals over my ‘thorns’.

Their be...

Life is like a sharp stick, not jagged or poisoned. Nor is it long, where it’ll pierce the skin deeply. It’s simply meant not to wound, but to wake us as if consciousness needs violence to exist. It’s a little cruel. Are we meant to learn to bleed in silence? Or are we being forced to grow calluses to keep ourselves breathing? It’s hard to tell which is which nowadays. Is that really what we want?...

There’s this kind of peace in surrendering to sleep, like slipping underneath the water and choosing not to swim back up. No thrashing — just the hush of everything fading, as the world ripples above just out of reach. Voices muffled, colors blurring together. It’s different here — not a bad different, though. Like walking through a door you didn’t know existed. Weird, but the kind that fits toget...

His poetry isn’t bleeding for you, nor is it for himself. All he wants is to place his pain somewhere — on paper, in words, simply in something safer than a conversation. But fear clings to his mind like it always does. Because what if he doesn’t know how to tell someone the truth? What if he can’t say it right? What if all that comes out is stutters and silence? Like his tongue forgot how to move...

I don’t think I’m human anymore. Well, not in the way I used to be. Something’s changed inside and I can’t figure out what it is. Like something quieter has taken root in me not wanting to let go. I know it’s not skin, blood, or even a breath — it’s something we’re not used to.

I move through the shackles in my mind like fog, a voice without sound. It’s not easy. The chains are getting trapped i...