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?

Some things become so deeply etched into my bones that they can never be removed.

Fractures filled with leftover memories, songs, language, and emotions live inside them now. No matter how far I run, no matter how much I face them, that's where home lives.

I could break myself into little pieces and let every fracture heal, but it would still be there.

I could find a new home to move into me, but the old one would never leave. It would become a shared space, where ghosts still whisper my name, pulling me toward everything that could have been.

A haunting reminder that even if I heal, I'll always be just a little broken.

And I'll carry those fractures through time,

I am the Spider-Man plushie

sitting in your room.

I used to live with her.

She bought me

because she knew

he was your favorite hero.

I reminded her of you.

She held me

through her worst nights—

in a place meant for healing,

after watching someone die,

trying to rebuild a mind

that didn't feel like hers.

I saw her believe in something again.

I saw her mistake it for love.

He hurt her.

Controlled her.

Even her dog wasn't safe.

I watched her shrink

until her mother took her home—

and even there

she felt like nothing.

A failure.

Unwanted.

Living in a basement

that didn't feel like home.

But she still reached for you.

Quietly.

Guilty.

Afraid she didn't deserve

what you were offering.

Still—

she imagined you.

In small ways.

In games.

A life where you were married,

where you became someone

the world would read.

She believed in that version of you

even when she didn't believe in herself.

And then you spoke again—

hours passing

like nothing had ever broken.

You had been loving her

in the background all along.

Learning her language.

Writing her into pages.

No one had ever done that for her.

You forgave her.

You told her she deserved love.

And I watched

as you both undressed—

not just clothes,

but everything you hid

from the rest of the world.

I have never seen

someone that happy.

To her—

you were the one.

And one day,

she sent me to you.

She sprayed me

so you would remember her scent.

You held me close—

lived in it.

Even after it faded,

you didn't let go.

But something changed.

Her voice

stopped living in the room.

Your light dimmed.

Now you hold me

through quieter nights—

covering me

in tears instead of dreams.

The love is still here.

I can feel it in you.

But hers—

I don't know where it went.

And now

I watch you stare at the ceiling,

trying to find the strength

just to leave your room,

and I wonder—

where does love go

when it leaves one person

I. @traveledlight

You said it would be best if we kept space,

that anything more would overflow

into the quiet corners of our rooms.

But you still come back.

You want to read my book of secrets

like it’s something given, not taken.

Maybe you’re curious about the way I love—

even with trauma bleeding through the pages,

it didn’t turn me into something worse.

You keep returning with questions,

like I’m a puzzle you enjoy solving,

checking if I’m still okay in the silence you created.

How can I be so important

when I’m just me?

But the irony is

you give yourself away too.

In the way you care.

In the way you return.

In the way your own pages feel unfinished

unless I’ve read them.

Maybe you want to be understood

just as much as I do.

And maybe that’s why you come back—

because my story

is also the place

where yours gets read.

II. @sparklesinmyhead

The space we created,

asked for lines to be written.

So we had no choice but to fill them with ourselves.

That's why I came back to you.

And your secrets were still there, waiting to be read.

I tried to understand you.

In every sense and every word.

I was bleeding too, somehow...

If you were a puzzle, I was a piece of it,

so we fixed ourselves together.

At least, that's what I think.

I couldn't hold it back, so yes, I gave part of myself too.

I like the way you care,

and I don't regret returning.

The lines needed to be written!

You understand me, and that's enough.

I came back, so here we are —

Because when you read it, I will know another chapter started,

The universe keeps giving me just enough to stay a little longer.

Just enough hope. Just enough timing. Just enough people arriving when I need them most.

Sometimes it makes me wonder about fate, about where I'm supposed to be.

Because I don't think I was meant to make it this far.

And yet I have.

I've met the right people at the right moments, in ways that feel too precise to dismiss entirely.

Maybe there's a reason for that.

Maybe I'm meant for something more.

Or maybe "more" is smaller than I imagined.

Maybe it's making someone's day. Being there when they're falling apart. Saying the thing they needed to hear before they gave up.

I know I've touched lives.

I know I've helped people find themselves.

And sometimes I wonder where they would be if I hadn't been here.

It's strange.

I spend so much time helping other people find their way,

while still searching for my own.

But maybe that's part of it.

Maybe my purpose isn't to lead the journey.

Maybe it's to carry a lantern for a while until someone else can see the path.

And maybe, for now,

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