i fold this note into the dark pocket of years,

slip it under your door,

though you don’t know yet that the door will splinter.

listen, but not too closely.

you can’t bear the whole chord.

half-truths will be your bandages:

tell yourself the storm is just weather,

that the hand on your shoulder is steady,

that the silence in your chest means peace.

believe these lies like medicine.

they will taste bitter, but they will keep you breathing.

truth is heavier than your wrists can hold right now.

so i’ll speak in fragments—

you will not stay small.

you will not drown in the mirror’s mouth.

one day, your skin will feel less like a cage

and more like a doorway.

but i will not tell you when.

if i do, you’ll count the days like stones in your pocket,

dragging you down.

just know: the current that drags you

is the same one that carries you forward.

love who you can, even if it burns.

lose what you must, even if it hollows.

forgive yourself last, but do not forget to do it.

when you find this note—

or when it finds you—

read it twice:

once as a warning,

once as a dare.

the door only opens one way.

rust creeps along the iron bones,

tiny red veins stitching neglect into metal,

and windowsills hold fruit that has forgotten the sun,

its skin wrinkled, perfumed with the soft rot of time.

foundations sigh beneath the weight of silence,

floorboards groaning like tired lungs,

walls remembering laughter that no longer echoes,

and ivy claws at stone with patient insistence.

decay is tender, too—

a hand letting go of something loved,

the quiet release of breath, of memory,

the slow bleed of color from petals once proud.

it lives in the body,

in the mind’s corridors,

in cities where graffiti peels and paint flakes,

in spaces between people who once knew each other.

and yet there is a strange beauty in it,

the poetry of what cannot last,

the shimmer of dust motes in sunlit corners,

the silvering of hair, the yellow of autumn leaves,

the final exhale before night swallows day.

to witness decay is to witness time,

to see the fierce and fragile,

to understand that endings

are not failures, but truths

carved into the world with patient, merciless hands.

midnight spills itself

across the room like ink,

bleeding into corners

where even your thoughts

won’t follow.

it is the hour that asks nothing,

only waits—

quiet, patient,

like a hand resting on your back

but never pushing.

here, the air tastes slower.

the walls lean in

as if they know your name.

even the moon holds her breath,

watching.

midnight does not belong to the loud.

it belongs to the watchers,

the waiters,

the ones who find comfort

in the ache of stillness.

and when it passes,

you feel it go—

like someone slipping out of bed

without saying goodbye.

in the hush before the storm, a spark—

soft as a whisper, sharp as a bite—

slips through the stillness, carves a mark

on bones that once forgot to fight.

the match was struck in silence first,

beneath a sky too bored to cry,

and all at once, the hunger thirsts—

for heat, for truth, for reasons why.

ignite the pulse beneath your skin,

let old regrets be set alight.

this is not where you end, but begin—

you were always meant to burn this bright.

the flowers wilt before they’re placed.

mourning suits fit like disgrace.

a hush, then murmurs, rustling pews—

all eyes await the one who knew.

i step to speak. my voice is clean.

measured tone, rehearsed and lean.

they think i loved the one who fell—

i watched them crumble. knew too well.

behind me, grief drips thick and black,

a cloud that curls along my back.

it stains the windows, crawls the walls,

it hums behind the preacher’s calls.

i clear my throat.

begin the lie.

“a soul too bright to ever die.”

they nod. they break. they wipe their eyes.

while i recall their final cries.

each word i shape in velvet skin

wraps the rot i hid within.

“she lived with grace.” (her blood ran slow.)

“she left too soon.” (i made it so.)

i lift their name with solemn grace,

mask the tremor, slow my pace.

but in the pause between each line,

the silence knows this grief is mine.

the dead don’t speak—but they surround.

she lingers here, without a sound.

a presence thick as winter breath,

a gaze beneath the veil of death.

she floats behind me—numb, unseen—

eyes like frost on guillotine.

if they knew, would they still weep?

or throw me to the pit so deep?

yet here i stand, the mourner’s guide,

while guilt and shadow stand beside.

a perfect lover, a grieving friend,

the one who brought her to the end.

this is the curse of spoken grace:

to name the loss you helped erase.

and when the last word dares to fall—

her silence is the loudest call.

i end with silence. let it sit—

a sacred hush, rehearsed and lit.

they bow their heads. the tears arrive.

and i remain the one alive.

step away, heart neat, confined—

but grief is not so well-designed.

it clings to collars, stains the hem,

like wet black lace that knows it’s them.

they clutch their hands and kiss the frame

of photos blurred by candle flame.

“she had a light,” they say again.

they never saw it snuffed by men.

i pass the coffin—one slow glance.

no tremble, tear, or second chance.

but inside me, thunder moans—

her whisper threading through my bones.

“you spoke so sweet, you liar’s tongue.

but death remembers what you’ve done.”

i feel her breath behind my eyes.

i blink. i smile. no one’s wise.

but in that box, she doesn’t rest—

she stalks the hollows of my chest.

and still i nod. still i console.

play the mourner’s well-worn role.

i tell her mother, “she was strong.”

a pause—

i know that i was wrong.

she weeps against my folded hand.

if she knew, she’d let me stand

where her daughter sleeps instead.

but i just cradle what i bled.

the hymns begin. a choir sings.

their harmony is tightening strings.

each note wraps tighter round my neck—

a velvet noose, so soft, so wrecked.

they praise her life. i watch the sky.

no lightning bolt. no heavens cry.

god is quiet. so is guilt.

but both are rivers i have spilt.

i see her there in every face.

the mourners lost inside this place.

she lives in them, but not in peace—

she lives in fragments. piece by piece.

so bury her.

lower her deep.

let the roots and worms all keep

the body that i once betrayed—

the quiet girl i made afraid.

but know this much, if nothing more:

i gave the speech. i shut the door.

and if you think this grief’s untrue,

remember—

i still spoke for you.

guilt and shame and other things

i carry like loose wedding rings,

like names i whispered once in prayer,

now tangled in my thinning hair.

regret, a coat that doesn’t fit,

but still i wear it—bit by bit.

the sleeves too long, the collar tight,

i sleep in it some nights. not right,

but familiar.

i bite my tongue ’til it forgets

the words i never should’ve said.

i trace the ghosts of text unsent,

love letters turned to punishment.

there’s grief that curls around my spine,

it doesn’t speak, it doesn’t whine—

just hums a song that sounds like “stay,”

and weighs me down most every day.

i clean the kitchen just to cope,

scrub at the counter like it’s hope.

but nothing lifts. not soap, not time.

the past still drips through every line.

i tell myself i’ve made my peace—

but peace, you see, is just a lease.

and every month it comes up due,

i watched him from the cornered dusk,

where want sat folded, clean and husk’d—

and in his eyes, a mirrored ache,

like fire caught in stillest lake.

we never spoke the thing out loud,

yet silence wore it like a shroud.

each glance—a question; each breath, reply,

a dialectic slow to die.

he looked at me as if he knew

what Plato carved in forms so true:

that love is less of flesh and skin,

and more the soul it dwells within.

and Socrates, that wretched sage,

who drank the hemlock, turned the page—

would nod and say, “it is the mind

that burns when kindred souls are blind.”

i think he yearned the way i did:

in half-thoughts that the daylight hid.

a man undone by want, not shame—

and i, undone for much the same.

we passed like ships—no wind, no call—

but still i felt his shadow fall.

a heat between us, carved and vast,

of futures dreamt and questions asked.

so if he dreams, i hope he sees

a room of stars, a hush, a breeze—

and me, beside him, eyes alight,

i. root

beneath the bone, beneath the blood,

where shadows sleep in ancient mud,

a hunger stirs—too old to name,

too wild to pity, too raw to tame.

it’s written deep in marrow maps,

in folded genes and primal traps;

a need not born from here or now,

but handed down from ape to brow.

ii. flame

it starts as thirst, a whisper-thin,

a pulse beneath the calloused skin—

a flicker in the spinal cord,

a taste of ruin they adored.

the bottle sings, the needle bites,

the craving stalks through dreamless nights;

the dopamine, the fireglass thrill—

each hit a war of want and will.

and though i scream, i beg, i cry,

my hands still reach. i don’t know why.

except—i do. it’s in the strand.

my father’s ghosts still guide my hand.

iii. echo

they say we crawled from beast to man,

from claw to thought, from club to plan—

but even progress wears a chain,

and even fire loves the pain.

i chase what hunted them before:

the sugar, sex, the blood, the war.

it’s not just mine, this cursed affliction—

it’s coded deep. it’s phylogenetic fiction.

iv. fracture

is freedom real, or just a lie?

a myth we teach ourselves to try—

to break the loop, to cut the cord,

to silence what we can’t afford.

i am man with beast’s desire,

inheriting a forest fire.

and though i burn, i start to see—