I've become your every good morning,

the sun that warms the start of your day.

You carry me in your pocket,

and your hand finds its way to me

whenever you have something to say.

We share memories,

pieces of old lives,

and with every story,

I feel something grow inside me.

So what keeps me on your mind?

My little fluff of warmth,

so innocent and pure.

The way you look at me while stretched across the floor,

your whole body humming with vibrating purrs,

must be love,

because you only look at me that way.

I guess I'm your favorite

in this house of madness.

Sometimes I wonder how you see me.

Maybe as something strong,

even when I'm not.

Tall, deep-voiced,

the provider who brings home your meals,

a fierce predator

who somehow becomes gentle for you,

scratching your silky head

and throwing your favorite toy across the room.

We don't deserve these little menaces.

And yet you're my favorite one.

With your single orange brain cell

firing in every direction as you race through the house,

waking me at six in the morning for breakfast,

or demanding attention the moment I try to write.

But I wouldn't trade it.

My little orange companion,

you've been beside me through some of my hardest days

when no one else was.

As if, in your own strange way,

you knew I wasn't okay.

You'd curl up beside me,

purring as though you were trying to convince me

that everything would be alright.

And sometimes,

I believed you.

Maybe that's what we're here for.

Helping each other survive.

Giving the kind of love

that's hard to find in a world so often cruel.

So purr away, my little friend.

I've given up on trying.

There's a cost to getting close,

and I've grown comfortable with this loneliness.

I feel a weariness,

like my emotions fell out of my bones

and found somewhere else to call home.

My energy spent on quick hits of dopamine

and hoping for long nights of sleep,

I find more peace in my dreams.

Maybe I've seen all I care to see

and lived all the lives I wanted to live.

I haven't felt as alive

as I did in 2025.

It's harder now

to find the point of this year

and the next.

But maybe it's okay

to live in this complacent contentment

for a little while.

It's the hardest

and easiest thing I could do.

And maybe tomorrow,

just maybe,

I'll feel that spark again.

But for now,

I rest in the heat of these summer nights,

watching the life I wanted to live

unfold in other people's stories.

Maybe it'll be my turn

Your voice pulls me in every time you talk to me,

that soft accent,

and I wonder how it would sound in quieter spaces.

Would you smile the way you do

when you get shy

and laugh about something?

Would your eyes grow wide

and find mine,

lost in the moment,

wanting me a little closer?

Would you blush fiercely

if I brushed my hands through your hair,

lingering on your lips with my eyes?

Or would it be while taking a closer look at your tattoos,

tracing my fingers along the lines

drawn on something I already worshiped as art?

You see yourself as normal,

but I see someone

who could make my legs weak

and my stomach burn,

someone whose touch could steal the breath from my lungs.

Because somehow,

you are perfect.

My night flower.

And the thought of you

makes me feel the way I did

the morning after that dream.

A dream I wished could bloom

and wrap itself around me,

if only for a moment,

just to know what it feels like

Does it wander through your thoughts,

the way I once made you find yourself?

You asked questions,

and I gave you answers

that reflected who you were.

And still you search.

Sometimes I wonder

if you miss the way I saw you,

the way I could pull hidden things from you

without ever asking twice.

Does the thrill of being understood

still linger somewhere beneath your skin?

Because I know you think of me

without saying a word.

I know you follow me into the night,

meeting me in those quiet spaces

between sleep and waking.

Your favorite place to be.

You wonder why I call you dream girl.

Maybe it's because I know

how distance disappears there.

How time loosens its grip.

How every road seems to lead you back

to the place you always wanted to be.

So find your way to me when you can.

I'll be waiting

Has fate handed me meaning

in the form of dreams once again?

I found you there,

surprising me in the shape of songs.

A playlist of you and me.

A timeline where we never stopped existing

day to day.

I woke to the irony of the holiday,

a celebration of hearts finding one another

on a different day

than the rest of the world.

Why this dream, why today?

What is it trying to say

about what this is meant to be?

Whether now,

or in some distant future,

is there a universe

where this story is true?

Or am I simply condemned

to return to it again and again,

drawn back by longing

I saw you in my dream,

in a place among the stars.

A place so beautiful it could only be matched by the way you looked at me.

I felt weak, your lips paralyzing me into surrender.

I knew I was yours.

You took control of me with your hands, laying me down, tracing my body like a map of places you wanted to visit.

There was a gentleness in your touch, soft and tender.

You wanted to take your time, to have me the way your heart desired.

In your accented voice, you told me to give in,

and so I surrendered.

I expected intensity,

but you were loving.

Kissing my body, holding my hands as you worked your way down.

I didn't expect such slow passion, but you made me burn.

The way you made love to me wasn't just sex.

It felt like something that had existed long before us,

something that made you feel seen, something that made you feel safe.

And I could feel it in the way you gave your heart to me in that moment.

It wasn't just an act.

It was peace.

It was a sharing of who we are as our energies became one.

A unity that begged to be repeated in this new world,

because Earth had failed in gentleness,

I've been told I'm stuck, but I'm not—not in the same way anymore.

The body keeps score, though,

in the way the brain carved pathways through all of it

until longing became something almost addictive.

It's less obsession now,

more residue.

The way certain songs still arrive like waves.

The way early mornings pull at what remains.

How loneliness can suddenly make old feelings feel alive again.

Even the aesthetics of my days carry traces of it.

Certain phrases still spark something small inside me.

And being deeply understood—

ironically, in the way I once believed I couldn't be—

still lingers somewhere beneath everything else.

A person can be gone,

yet the body can unconsciously hold onto what the possibility of them felt like:

the intensity,

the imagined futures,

the version of yourself that existed beside them,

and the feeling of finally having something deeply reciprocated.

It's strange to carry something that no longer exists.

Stranger still

the way the body remembers

I sometimes don’t see it, but I am reminded of my strength and resilience, that I didn’t let it change me into someone I’m not. The way I show up for the people in my life. I guess I love in the way I want to be seen and cared for.

I see better days ahead, in the way I will heal these hidden scars, in my health, and in finding myself along the way. A new path forward, giving sunshine to everyone I meet, and I hope I will grow from the cold of this extended winter I’ve lived through.

Meaning will exist again, not in one grand moment, but in small moments over time, in the way I change, connect, and allow myself to be brave.

I am tired in ways I can no longer think through.

This year hasn’t been soft—

it keeps moving without reason,

and I can’t seem to find my place

in all the spaces I cannot fill.

I drift through a world

where I cannot replace the meaning

I once lived inside of,

a path unforeseen

but somehow accepted anyway.

The exhaustion has soaked into my being,

like something that once made me feel alive

has been extracted from my cells,

and now I am slowly being put to death—

my eyes struggling to stay open,

wondering if I’ll fall asleep behind the wheel

and wake only to darkness.

Conversation has become something

I have to fight through,

a desperate attempt

to stay connected to something beyond myself.

My ears ring.

The fog in my brain twists words into static

while I struggle to pull meaning from them.

Still, I persist

in the way I try to care.

I feel disoriented by my own cravings,

my need for sleep pushing me toward an edge

I can no longer clearly see.

I would sooner surrender myself

to the sweetness of IV sedation

than drag my body through another empty day,

watching the dark angel in my dreams

try to coax me

You are invasive,

like night-blooming jasmine.

You’ve wrapped yourself around my thoughts,

fast-growing in your tenderness,

and I feel myself letting you.

I wait for you to open,

knowing there’s something sweet inside.

Queen of the night, they say.

I would let you rule me endlessly,

intoxicated by your floral fragrance,

imagining the taste must be just as sweet.

I want to protect you

and watch you grow

the way I wish I had long ago—

to be the sunshine

you always say that I am.

I’m your warmth in the day,

and you’re my seduction in the night—

a cycle

It’s the interactions.

The smile.

The way their voice changes with you.

The little phrases that would sound strange to anyone else,

but somehow feel natural between the two of you.

The unique way they touch you.

Their laugh.

The inside jokes.

The way they kiss you,

and the way it tastes.

The way they smell when they hug you.

The way they react to surprises,

or the quiet shift in them when they’re sad.

The intimate moments.

It’s all the little things

that seem so small while they’re happening,

but become the biggest things to lose

I feel like I’d steal the innocence from your eyes.

I know you imagine me

in the dark spaces of your room,

my thumb brushing slowly across your lips.

But what if those hands

caressed your face instead—

my fingers slipping gently through your hair,

brushing softly against your ear?

Maybe tracing slowly down your neck,

your chest flushed beneath my touch,

close enough to leave your breathing uneven.

How far would they need to wander

before you let go of your idea of decency?

Before hesitation softened into touch?

Would the warmth of my chest pull you closer

as my hands pinned yours against the bed,

our noses barely touching—

just enough to make you linger there with me?

The sound of my voice in your ear

asking what you want.

Would it make you lean into me?

Would you lose your voice

You sent me a picture of the darkness in your room.

But I wonder if you think of me there—

a subtle thought

of the light I could bring into it.

My voice filling the black spaces with color,

something you could grow used to.

My fingers hushing your lips,

tracing them ever so lightly

just to feel the softness.

You want to see me,

but for now I’m only a shadow

bringing you warmth in the cold night,

making your chest ache gently.

To think of the reasons

behind the reason you said hello

running through your mind,

leading all the way to this dark room.

A chance encounter

that changed your life.

And tonight,

you wonder what this encounter

I still find myself lost in everything cosmic,

like every star was meant for wishing,

like the moon was something once shared,

like there was a life before this one.

There’s still a thread of fate

wrapped around our fingers,

pulling even as I drift

through endless space.

For all the distance between us,

there was still a flame—

and even if it turned to ember,

one spark could rewrite the sky