Whispers In Verse

There is a silence

that fills the space between us

like a gas that expands without permission,

breathing where words should be.

You ask, How was your day?

and I say, Fine.

But it’s not.

It never is,

and it never will be,

because in that single word

lives everything I don’t want to burden you with:

the crack in my chest

that widens every time you leave,

the days spent watching shadows

crawl across the walls

like old regrets.

I watch you,

but I never ask,

Are you alright?

because I know the answer will break

in places neither of us can fix.

I hold my tongue,

and it wraps around my throat

like a vine,

silent and tightening.

We sit,

drinking tea that’s gone cold,

our eyes moving past each other,

finding refuge in the cracks of the room,

in the dust that has gathered

on what we no longer touch.

When you say goodbye,

your lips form the shape of it

but the sound is hollow,

like a bell that has forgotten

its own resonance.

And I am left with all that wasn’t said—

the weight of the unsaid,

the absence between us

that swallows the air,

that stretches

There is no beginning here.

Only a before

that slipped through

like breath in winter.

I awaken in glass,

a curvature that curves me back into myself.

No corners. No end.

Only the narrowing throat

that whispers of choice,

but offers none.

Time is not a line.

It is a spiral of falling.

The sand does not rush—

it descends with the certainty of ruin.

Each grain carries a name I used to answer to.

Each one,

a memory rubbed smooth

by forgetting.

I speak—

but my voice becomes dust,

absorbed by the hush of centuries.

Even sound does not escape here.

Only silence survives,

layering itself like sediment.

Sometimes,

I dream of shattering.

Of pressing palms to glass

until fractures bloom like frost.

But this prison was not built

with escape in mind.

It was made to measure me—

over and over again—

as I diminish.

The top empties.

The bottom swells.

And in the narrowing center,

I exist in the thinnest version of myself—

stretched between what I was

and what I will be

once the last grain forgets to fall.

Perhaps then,

the glass will turn.

Or maybe,

there is no turning.

Only the endless

I never climbed—

I slipped.

Along walls damp with silence,

past doors that opened to nothing but noise.

While they moved upward,

I staggered—

a diagonal thing,

crawling the understructure

of dreams handed to others.

I grew crooked,

fed on flickering screens and late-night arguments,

on the hunger of unopened report cards

and the weight of names whispered like warnings.

No one noticed a plant

thriving in shadows,

twisting around broken furniture,

fattening on regret.

They said I’d find myself—

but I lost pieces instead.

Dropped them in the gutter

with every smile I faked too long.

I wasn’t built for the sun.

I became something else—

not a tree, not a flame,

but a tangle of roots and rust,

thriving in the cracks

There is a silence

that lives in me now—

not the absence of sound,

but the shape of you,

no longer moving through the world.

Grief is not always a storm.

Sometimes it is a soft cloth,

folded and refolded

in the drawer you once opened

without thought.

Now I open it carefully,

as if touching memory

might tear it.

I want to tell you that I’m still learning

how to live in a world

you are no longer building.

Your hands—

once everywhere—

in the soup, in the soil,

in the smoothing of fevered skin—

are now a ghost choreography

behind everything I do.

You loved without needing praise.

The kind of love that stains nothing,

but seeps into bone.

I did not always see it.

Now I see nothing more clearly.

You gave me a language

before I had words—

not just speech,

but the grammar of kindness,

the poetry of care.

And I still speak it.

In your accent.

Every day.

Today I do not offer you flowers—

you, who are now part of root and bloom.

I offer instead

my living.

A prayer disguised as breath.

A thousand small acts

done in your name

without speaking it.

Because what you gave

was not a monument—

but a way.

She was never thunder,

but the sky knew her weight-

how she held it up

when the world forgot to be light.

There were no medals,

no stage-lit applause

when she folded pain into quiet strength

and cooked dinner anyway.

Her love wasn't soft, always.

It was steel wrapped in warmth,

fingers calloused from labor

still braiding gentleness into my hair.

She carried generations

in the curve of her spine,

and still found room

to carry me,

even when I thought I didn't need it.

She never asked to be called hero.

She just was.

In every no she said to protect me.

In every yes that cost her peace.

And I-

I am the version of love

she sculpted with bare hands,

weathered but whole.

Because she was strong enough

You’re still out here thinking love don’t lie.

thinking if you give enough, they’ll stay.

still calling the hurt worth it.

still letting them in just because they said sorry.

You keep breaking and calling it growing.

You keep bleeding and calling it love.

You still think They’ll see you If you just stay soft enough.

But they don’t. They never did.

and you— you still think this is what real feels like.

You say you want love but you don’t know how to fucking show it

You show up with jokes with half-truths With borrowed charm and think that’s enough to keep someone real

You don’t listen You wait for your turn to speak You turn her pain into your excuse her needs into noise Her love into labor

You think showing up once erase all the times you didn’t

You weaponize silence make her beg for softness Then call her needy When she breaks

You call her crazy When she finally says You hurt me

You want love That doesn’t require growth You want praise without accountability You want her body not her honesty her loyalty not her limits

You can’t handle being seen So you make her feel small You run when it’s hard Then wonder why she stops chasing

you say “This is who I am.” like that’s a fucking excuse to keep being a child in a grown man’s world

no— You don’t want love You want a place to hide a warm bed a soft target

When a man loves you in private,

it’s not poetry—it’s blood.

Not flowers, but the thorns he pulls, one by one,

from the ruins of your ribcage.

It’s not delicate, this kind of love.

It’s teeth gritted, breath sharp,

the kind that feels like tearing

but somehow rebuilds you at the same time.

He doesn’t love the version of you people applaud.

Not the flawless smile,

not the curated grace,

but the raw, unfiltered you that stares at him

with rage in your veins

and the salt of your tears still burning down your face.

He loves the aftermath.

The earthquake.

The wreckage.

It’s not about the things he says,

because his words barely matter here.

It’s about the way he shows up

like a storm you didn’t know you were asking for,

fingers tracing rage and ruin beneath your skin,

and instead of running,

he leans in.

Into your chaos. Your mess.

Into the jagged-edged you

you swore no one could stand close to

without getting cut.

When a man loves you in private,

it’s feral, primal,

an undercurrent of something holy but dark.

He doesn’t parade it for applause.

He doesn’t wrap it in shiny paper

or dress it in lies polite enough for company.

He takes your rawest ache and holds it in his hands,

knowing it could burn his skin,

and still,

he won’t let go.

He loves you where others are afraid to look—

in the shadows where your guilt hides,

at the bottom of the bottle,

in the cracks your laughter slips through at night.

He doesn’t care if the world calls it love

because it’s something darker,

something deeper,

something that doesn’t need anyone else’s name.

When he loves you in private,

it’s a collision, a quiet destruction.

You wonder if you’ll survive it.

And somehow you both do—

bruised, raw,

but alive.

I'm sorry in a way that language can't hold— in the marrow-deep kind of way That keeps you up at 3 a.m. sifting through the wreckage of what you had And what you destroyed.

I didn’t just hurt you. I dismantled something sacred. Not in one blow— But slowly, carelessly, choice after choice, until you stopped looking at me Like I was home.

I knew better. I did it anyway. I watched the light leave your eyes and still stayed quiet, like silence could erase The sound of you breaking.

I'm sorry For the way I made you feel small, alone, unseen— While I spun my guilt into excuses and named those reasons.

You were good to me. Better than I ever was to you. And I paid for it In the quiet after you left, In the ache that settles in When I remember your laughter and know it doesn't belong to me anymore.

I don’t want you back. I want you whole. I want you far from the version of me that let you fall.

But if I could say one last thing— If I could press it into your hands And have you believed it— It would be this:

Deeper—

the word swallows itself as I plummet

past the thin skin of childhood stories

and into somewhere thick, pulsing,

alive with its own teeth.

Deeper than the sweet sugar-fear

of curious girls and rabbit clocks.

Here the rules get slippery,

and I dissolve—

all sharp edges,

nerves sparking under strange sunlight.

It is not air I fall through anymore

but the ache of shedding

old names, the hush that bruises

when all you can hear is

your own animal breath,

closer now,

as even gravity forgets

the proper order of things.

Deeper, still—

where the questions squirm,

where the riddles bite,

where the blue of the sky

has long since burned away.

I feel my voice thinning out,

my hands groping through shadows

soft as velvet, thick as waiting,

hoping for a wall, a door,

a heartbeat in the dark.

I do not know what I am anymore—

falling past sense, past wanting to land,

only this free, shivering momentum,

pulled by something older than wonder,

something with claws and velvet gloves,

something that knows

that down never ends,

and deeper

is the only place

You’re not even here, but I feel you— in my jaw, in my thighs, in the way I can’t fall asleep without replaying How you made me beg with my mouth full.

I can’t focus. Can’t eat. Can’t touch myself without hearing your voice snarling in my ear— Don’t stop. louder.

You rewired me. Now I crave pain in your tone. Power in your grip. And silence so loud it sounds like your breath waiting to strike.

I check my phone like an addict. Thighs clenched. Heartbroken. Still wet from a memory that shouldn’t still be this sharp.

I don’t want love. I want the way you say my name when I’m on all fours. The way you leave without guilt. The way I ache when you do.