#121403

mom, i’ve committed a felony.

blood rushed, dripping down the sink.

oxygen buried itself among the atoms

of this once-white cloth,

now a rusty brown

that used to blaze a vivid red.

washing with water

wouldn’t do much,

would it?

twisting visions and shadows unfold.

i stumble upon the scene of the crime before me.

am i the killer,

the victim,

or merely a witness?

standing frozen

within the void behind my pitch-black eyes,

i simply couldn’t discern

what was surreal

and what was reality.

could it have been the beating heart

i once cherished

inside such a fragile vessel

that wounded itself—

or somebody else’s?

yet now i’m convicted,

or at least that’s how it feels,

of something so grievous

and so unforgivable

that no gods

could redeem me anymore.

if the motive was never there,

only as hazy

as the roads through the forest,

perhaps the greatest crime i committed

wasn’t the thought itself,

but leading them astray,

offering false hope,

leading them on

while i remained uncertain.

cuffed

and stripped of my own freedom,

beneath sharp eyes

that pierce straight through me,

i know my crimes

and my felonies all too well.

now i’m the antihero

in everyone’s story,

pulverized,

stomped into the ground,

once kicked aside.

now everything vanishes,

and slowly,

so will i.

to be free

from the felony

i know

i feel like an ant. metaphorically, i guess. hypothetically, maybe. when the whole world begins resembling some massive supernova of things, all orbiting too fast, too far, too beyond my own comprehension.. i’m an ant. with tiny grippers and wandering toes against soil and grass, carrying all this brute force and microscopic persistence that exudes almost nothing to the naked eye.

i’m an ant. a small terrestrial thing beneath systems much larger than itself. i can only look upward toward the trees and flowers that continue to bloom with such effortless grandeur, so dainty and beautiful that even the mere thought of reaching one of their pollens feels absurd for a creature like me. but they’re too far. and i’m too small.

when the merciless rain poured—

the heavens unbridled their wrath

it did not stop

until the water reached my lungs—

suffocating,

an unholy kind of burning

catastrophes have a way

of reminding me

how fragile i am,

how easily i break

—lays my frailty bare

i once prayed

to be struck with pain,

to be tempered by fire

but not like this—

not now, not at the eleventh hour

not when i am

standing at the edge of something bright,

on the cusp of the luminous

thirsting for the view of success

after clawing my way

out of the abyss that kept me

i wish i were not this frail,

not this tender, not this easily undone—

so easily repelled,

so easily wounded

when my own body turns against me,

when flesh betrays its keeper,

who is left to defend me?

—who stands sentinel?

my mind is quiet,

but the weight of the world

has settled on my shoulders

a yoke i cannot cast off

i beg for it to stop

i ask when the rain will end,

when the storm will relent

when will i see

green again—

verdure, softer days,

maybe the ground isn’t shaken quite as much,

or maybe the rain no longer feels so raw upon my skin,

or perhaps the sun shines a little brighter these days—

but I’m not nineteen anymore.

the cracks of the window let sunlight leak and peek upon me,

the dampness of the blanket when I squeezed it a little too tightly on a cold day,

the softness of the socks I’ve never let go of.

I’ve waited for these moments for so long,

but I’m not nineteen anymore.

when the roots of my chest no longer pull

through valves and atriums penduluming around the clock,

when silence and quiet finally turn to grace—

eternal grace—

when flowers grow beneath my bed once more,

but I’m not nineteen anymore.

when your name no longer haunts me

as much as it always did,

the droplets of tears once stored

now forgotten,

my heart could be a little wiser,

a little healed—

but I’m not nineteen anymore.

when love comes knocking on my door,

but ignorance, my friend, is the greatest bliss I could ever wish for;

because it braids my walls together

only to break them down once more.

love feels more like a familiar face to me,

not even a neighbor—

but I’m not nineteen anymore.

I open my eyes to the new dawn of morning.

things remind me of what could’ve been,

what should’ve been.

strangers pass along the sidewalks,

in the moving petals of my disarray, calling out my name.

otherwise I might have looked back—

but no, I’m not nineteen anymore.

when the chirps resonate and whistles fling through the air,

when my hair flows with the childlike bliss of a maiden so fair,

life could still be a little unfair—

but at least

tainted with a rush of maroon and burgundy,

the white sheets i’ve warm-pressed over the weekend,

with the cold breeze releasing upon every motion,

exhausting itself into the tender air with smoke and dust,

find themselves splattered, unapologetic.

forgiveness is futile to a sinner like i am,

for no amount of pleas and silent protests

dismiss the grave case acquitted to me—

a demolition and life sentence rampaging through.

father, punish me for my sins and crimes.

but i am no evil—yet to what extent can humans be “good”?

what standards must be met?

as i knock on heaven and its door,

an angel seeps through and looks at me

with eyes full of longing and contempt,

and i fall back into a pit of wonder and fear.

i am no monster, but i am no angel in disguise,

with the feathers that fell from my scapula,

as i reached far too much for the sun.

the heat ablaze scorched and melted what kept me intact.

i have now fallen, with all shame upon my back,

like an angel stripped bare of its own wings.

lost my being, i find myself at the doorstep,

like fragile darkness welcoming my footsteps,

a voice reaching out, calling out my name,

where light and shadow collide—

i knock on an angel’s door.

silently, quietly hoping she’d open it,

for even a sinner like me

might deserve parole on this sentence—

a sentence i must serve, maybe not in this life,

but even in the afterlife.

i knock until my knuckles forget my name,

until prayer sounds like hunger,

in life, we often find ourselves standing—

or walking, or gasping for air as we run.

amid unnamed misfits and quiet wonders,

we arrive at crossroads,

not one, but many at once,

with hindsight blinding in its lucidity,

its grip unrelenting,

while the horizon curves away—

daunting, deliberate,

draped in something dark and foreboding.

some flights we once took,

some breaths we saved—

bright, effervescent—

flicker, then dissipate.

but at these crossroads, there is always a pause.

gravity settles into your ears

like the weight of a familiar face,

and the buffered noise of the city collapses—

rewinding, pausing, reshuffling—

like an old mp3 jukebox

you stole from your mother’s attic,

still carrying songs you never learned to relinquish.

must I stay? must I go?

forces unseen contort the illusion of choice.

if the grass is greener on the other side,

then you must cross to discern it.

perhaps it is chartreuse, or navy blue,

or a bruised, tainted mauve—

color matters less than motion.

what matters is that you step.

now, in these crossroads we find ourselves:

small pedestrians brushing past

the lives of others,

and faltering through our own.

we read the signs,

watch the stoplights blink and hesitate,

imagining detours,

anticipating disasters before they happen.

let it go.

here, in these crossroads, we remain—

messy, jumbled,

alive with a restless curiosity.

do not fumble. smile more.

step forward.

no one dies from tripping

toward the other side—

but many are buried beneath

the regret of never leaping at all.

i’m clocking out.

the pitch of inkling droplets from my loosened grip echoes, keeping time with the strangling strings in my chest that have been pounding for a while now, pulling me back.

the mind is in utter disarray—a non-formidable outrage, a spaghetti bowl of champagne and milk stirred into a shot of madness. it feels like a call, time slipping away in hazy visions and frozen peripheries of passersby along the wandered streets i’ve walked. i felt the dusty roads and smoking pots—so vivid, forever etched in memory—yet slowly disfiguring themselves at the back of my head.

where is this heading?

with so many words unsaid and unspoken, songs yet unsung and unreleased, this anchor drags me down so desperately that the more i resist, the cruel tides remind me again and again of whom i’m going against.

this pathetic sensation punches me in the gut—horrendous, vicious—stripping me from my body. i don’t believe in love. or maybe i refuse to believe in it anymore. perhaps it’s only a benefit of the doubt for the moment, or the skepticism in me has deepened into something existential: how a thing so profound has become a hostile organism at the tip of my tongue—once savored, once swallowed whole—but never again. i hate the pessimism, the fragile hypocrisy, how bitter this tastes—enough to ache my heart and dismantle my head all at once.

what if it is love?

maybe i simply don’t pour myself into trivial things like love, don’t acquaint myself with its afflictions and denominations—if those even exist. because what is it, if not love? i begin to question my capacity to give, to offer. by this rhetorical analogy i’ve come up with to visualize the paralysis in me:

i pour a drink with all my might, my soul. i squeeze every corner of myself, purging that sweet, lovely juice meant to be consumed wholeheartedly—binding to every muscle, scraping against every wall i have. but the receiving glass—the container—is unexpectedly immense. vast. an unexplored cavern with bright openings laced along every inch, waiting. like a child yearning for its mother. like a dog waiting for its owner. longing turned desperation—achingly beautiful, gut-wrenching.

as the horizon envelopes the two poles of passion, i can’t help it. i couldn’t.

the drink that i am—am i inadequate? am i not giving enough? not whether i am enough, but whether i give enough. even if i purge everything inside me, that is all i am. or was the other side simply too wide? too vast? like the ocean—so open, so endless—that everything touching it is devoured, swallowed whole by the water’s mouth, by whales unseen.

this juxtaposition of twisted realities convulses into a sick parallel—what is lacking versus what is too open—a thought unshaken, incomprehensible.

a sigh escapes into the air. with the brute force i carry in my pocket bag, this suffocates me, blinds me—striking the poor, paralyzed soul. i am whole, i am breathing, yet this slowly dismembers my limbs, cuts my veins, leaves me gasping.

i used to believe a silly, stupid kiss could save me from these feelings. now i blame it all on them—faded stains and tears—for giving me this heart of doubt. and i’ve convinced myself i won’t need any of it. anyone. anything.

There are no clean gaps in the mind of someone who once lived by catching dreams. Memory doesn’t fade into convenient silhouettes; it forms a web—dense, unbroken, and often far too loyal to the moments we wish would dissolve. The retired dreamcatcher knows this well. His past stretches out like constellations that refuse to be charted, shimmering just out of reach but close enough to haunt.

At the heart of his story is a jewel—beautiful, ancient, and merciless. He believed it was a blessing, a rare spark of wonder meant to illuminate the darker rooms of his life. But the glow had teeth. And like so many before him, he confused radiance with safety. By the time he realized it was devouring him, he was already hollowed out. The “arrows” that struck him weren’t random; they were tailored with suspicious accuracy, hitting all the soft spots he thought he’d armored long ago. And yet, in classic human fashion, he reached for more—even while bleeding—because we often crave the very thing that’s undoing us.

But the fall that followed wasn’t the whimsical descent of Wonderland. It wasn’t a journey that promised magic, meaning, or even a cheeky cat with unsolicited advice. What he found instead was a dungeon draped in silk—a place where beauty acted as both camouflage and trap. Petals concealed rot. Pearls became props in a performance staged to keep him compliant. Everything shimmered, but nothing was safe.

When he finally carved through the illusions—cutting too deep, as most of us do when we’re desperate—he came face to face with a truth he didn’t expect: the corpse of the person he used to be. Not physically, but spiritually. The fearless hunter. The version of himself that moved without hesitation. That man had died quietly, buried under wishful thinking and misplaced loyalty.

This is the part we rarely talk about: the after. The lingering fear that we’ve used up our last lifetime’s worth of courage. The whisper that says, “Don’t try again. You won’t survive the next fall.”

Because once you drink poison—and worse, once you swim in it, believing it’s some kind of baptism—you don’t come out unchanged. What you gave to that illusion doesn’t return to you. It stays behind, haunting the walls of that dungeon you escaped.

And yet, healing still happens, though it’s rarely poetic. It often feels like clawing your way out of a hole using only the grooves you carved during your own descent. But climbing is climbing, no matter how inelegant it looks.