Rue

Him and I we are two faces of the same coin,

Sculpted from the same forsaken swamp of mud

Shaped by the weary hands of one tired god,

Cursed with identical ruins etched in blood.

Yet it is I alone who’s dragged to the gallows,

Enslaved to the gutter, swallowed by shadows.

Him and I we share one fractured heart,

Mine beats for him, while his tears mine apart.

Him and I we are mirrors, alike yet never aligned.

Two reflections blurred, cruelly intertwined.

I hate him as viciously as I hate myself

He is my echo, my sickness, my stealth.

Him and I we are one

But

Every wound is a blessing wrapped in thorns,

Every scar, a map of where I’ve bled.

Every trauma drags me screaming through fire, burning lessons into my skin.

Every poem is a life I stitch together, a desperate attempt to make sense of the wreckage.

Every nightmare is a fist to my ribs, a whisper that hisses, it could always be worse.

Every tear carves valleys down my face.

Every sob shatters in my chest like broken glass.

But even in the ruins, even in the dark,

I fell into an abyss

a ceaseless tide that pulls but never drowns.

A relentless loop of longing.

A mirage where your shadow flickers

near, yet always out of reach.

I dream of your phantom entwined with mine,

your breath, embers on my skin,

your voice, an echo I chase through hollow corridors.

We spin in a dance only the lost can know.

In my dreams, we are whole.

In my dreams, we are right.

In my dreams, you choose me.

Yet dawn arrives, ruthless and golden,

its hands cold on my skin,

unraveling the lie, thread by thread.

Still, I, a fool, gather the frayed ends in trembling hands

Maimed beyond restoration,

Doomed beyond even the faintest attempt at saving.

I am tired. I am cold.

I wander through smoke and fog,

A shadow slipping between fractures of light.

I am broken beyond mending,

A shattered thing, splintered and raw.

I should be put down like a sick dog,

With a bullet I do not deserve.

The ashes of my soul will scatter like dust,

For there is no living flesh left to wound,

No more life left to give away.

I am a corpse, hollow and weightless, lifeless.

No breath is deep enough,

No touch lingers long enough,

No warmth is warm enough.

I am doomed. I am lost. I am cold.

I am the echo of every nightmare I have ever had.

I claw my way out of nightmares, only to find no solace in waking.

I wake. I perform– still never enough.

Cursed by knowing, consumed by guilt,

I survive on memories and starve on what ifs.

I am a walking graveyard, a shrine to wasted potential.

I am every cruel thing that has ever happened to me.

An imposter in my own skin,

I wear it like a borrowed cloak that never quite fits.

I am made of atoms desperate to escape one another,

And I pity them, as I pity myself.

Nothing is ever enough.

No fire burns hot enough.

I am cold. I am alone.

A braver soul would have let go.

But I linger–not out of courage, but cowardice,

Trapped within the worst version of a self I cannot escape.

I stare at the mirror, and emptiness stares back.

Flesh withers, body decays, veins run ice.

Eyes like glass, heart like stone, soul like ash.

And when I reach for myself,

tongue heavy with hunger, ribs pressing through skin too thin to contain the monstrous, rotting love I try to bury beneath it.

I am tired of loving more. I am tired of wanting more. I am tired of never being the one.

My limbs are frozen, yet my heart still smolders,

a flickering ember in a body left to the cold.

I love like a stray on its last breath

clawing, clenching, aching, yet always the one left torn apart.

I bark, I howl, I cry, I plea, I pray, I beg the sky for mercy, but it only answers with indifference.

Once in a while they pause, they stare, casting fleeting glances of pity, too afraid to come close.

And so I remain

shivering on the edge of their lives, feeding on scraps of kindness and littered feelings that rot before they reach me.

I love like a sick, forgotten dog. homeless, desperate, vulnerable, starving, ribs sharp as sorrow, a shadow crumpled by the roadside of moving crowds. They avert their eyes. They whisper disgust. They flinch in fear. They offer pity, never mercy, never love.

And so, I decay, a lonely shuddering ghost of devotion.

A stray, dying as I have always lived