#writeundertheinfluence

Sleep will not come.
Shadowy wings caress the echoes of my mind,
whispering, reminding me
of another time. Regret rises in my chest
like a winter ocean’s swell;
waves pulse through thought,
flashing faces long forgotten. Shame I buried so deep
I thought it gone
bubbles in my veins like
hot lava seeking an exit,
an instant to crystallize me. Water and magma meet and whirl,
each trying to drown the other;
steam hisses, spits,
fuel for the storm within. I watch, a pawn to memory,
my inadequacy’s pounding 
suppressed battles climbing to a raw crescendo at my core. I have learned, in time,
I am not alone:
we all carry regret,
heartache, sorrow. I have learned to find myself
among the force de mer of life
to be brave, to love, to hold fast. Now I seek to forgive
the child I once was,
who knew nothing but survival.

I didn’t get it.

For three years, there was constant arguing, pain, and abuse. Yet you kept me there. Even when I wanted to fix us, you kept me there. I found myself apologizing for simply having needs, begging for your forgiveness whenever I expressed how I felt.

All I ever wanted was your presence.

Not gifts. Not grand gestures when you felt me slipping away. I wanted you to genuinely be there to choose me, to see me, to love me in the moments that mattered.

I wish I had listened to my heart sooner.

Why did you keep all those pictures of me? Of us? More than 3,000 memories frozen in time. Why keep them all, yet hide her away where no one could see? You hid me for so long that part of me expected those photos to be tucked away beside hers.

Why did you keep me?

You said it was because you struggle to let go. But the truth is, you let go of me a long time ago. Your body stayed, but your love had already left.

Somewhere along the way, you stopped being the person I loved and became the person who hurt me.

The wounds you left behind do not disappear simply because time passes. I have searched for ways to erase the memories, but my body remembers what my mind tries to forget. It carries the weight of every cruel word, every broken promise, every moment I convinced myself that love was supposed to hurt.

How did you go from loving me to abusing me?

How did you go from crying over the thought of losing me to becoming the reason I cried myself to sleep?

I was too blinded by love to see who you truly were. I kept searching for the man I fell in love with, never realizing he had disappeared long before I was willing to admit it.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most—not losing you, but realizing that the person I loved may have only existed in the hope I carried for you.

The child within me lies captured in a glass box,
pressed against the cool, unblinking light
demons circling keeping me small, compliant a prisoner in my own skin.
Their murmurs stitched into the edges of my days;
they have kept me shrunken, watchful, and unfinished. The glass is thick and perfectly clean,
sealed with a brass padlock that glints like denial.
I curl in on myself, fetal and furtive,
arms a shelter from the shadows that lean in. The adult me sits in comfort Watching the firelight move
its crackle and hiss stoking a slow, warm logic.
Flames lick at the log until it forgets itself,
turning solid things to ash and memory.
There is no other sound but the wood giving heat;
my beloved cat breathes beside me, reminding me that I am loved.
Tears take their small, exact path down my cheek. I look back in time To the clear, bright prison,
peering through the glass at the world that waits.
Reason says that on the other side is safety
that the demons will remain where they belong:
seen, known, not erased but given a place.

Where my desires play peek-a-boo,

All my bones are casted in the hearth of romance,

Dormant, till she says, Hey!!!

I feel the same as you do!!

She turns a fox guileless,

a leopard lazy and

a lion meek,

She is the Shiva to my Parvati,

My longing for her has no peak….

Love is no longer what I feel for her now,

She has become the epiphany I desperately chase,

We have moved on from being compatible,

To simply being each other’s mirror image…

Is it the fault in our stars,

Coz, for her, I would break away from my constellation,

Still, one destined to end up as a white dwarf,

Other to perish in a supernova,

No silver lining for our reunion,

Even after our total annihilation…

Does this bother us, not even for a moment,

Forsaking the boat to forever,

We are content in the canoe of our now,

Even if destiny paved parallel pathways for us,

It tells an elephant he can fly,

Then conditions his confidence in feathers instead of tusks,

And when he fails to levitate,

Calls it a lack of mindset.

But the tragedy isn’t that he can’t soar,

It’s that he forgets the ground trembles when he walks.

No, I don’t want the sky.

I want to own the weight of my steps.

And make gravity my applause.

Let birds have their altitude.

The image I had of you is starting to fade. I replay it over and over, trying to keep it alive. Your voice — I love it so much. The way you look into my eyes when you speak to me… it makes the world feel frozen, like it’s just you and me existing in it. When I’m with you, my body sinks into a deeper kind of peace.

But I’m trying to preserve something that’s already gone.

I keep watering the plant, studying its leaves, wondering what else I can do to keep it alive — while you sit there already knowing it won’t survive. The truth is… it’s not coming back. I’m nurturing something that has already died.

I miss you, Jean. I dream of being in your arms one more time. I dream that every word you whispered to me was true. I dream that the love I felt wasn’t something I imagined.

But they are only dreams.

Because you chose not to fight for something that was fading. And I’m still here… holding onto hope, waiting for it to breathe again, even though deep down I know some things don’t resurrect once they’re gone