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,

The car is on the fritz.

The engine shakes as it overheats.

The right radiator fan has had enough.

Warmth becomes an oven

as I drive home, not sure I’ll make it.

I think about all the times

I didn’t appreciate the cold.

The temperature gauge climbs

like it’s deciding whether I get to continue.

I had my own understanding of heatwaves be fakin' me out, ironically.

They say this is the hottest it’s been in five years.

And no one fixes anything.

We didn’t need biblical figures to create hell.

We built it ourselves.

And we may never live

I don't feel safety anywhere—

jagged edges threatening

to bleed me out

with all the little cuts

they could give me.

Dissociation has returned

for the first time in months,

a soft drug

stealing breath

without offering space to exhale.

I'm haunted.

But I can't say it out loud.

I don't want you to know.

I don't want anyone to know.

Because what if saying it

makes it more real?

Every day feels laced with fear.

There's no exit.

I've built my walls so high,

I don't trust

anything anymore—

not even myself.

Afraid of self-sabotage.

Afraid of vulnerability.

I miss safety.

I miss being known.

Now I only hear echoes

of the place

that once held me.

And they say

I have to find it

I was in your home.

Someone I haven't seen or spoken to in a very long time.

Your face was a blur,

because I had forgotten it.

I watched as you painted pictures,

colored your walls,

cleaned your room.

Always moving through the room

to keep from going still.

I was a ghost

in your small room.

I tried to speak to you,

but you couldn't hear me.

I tried to write to you,

but my words disappeared.

For days,

I watched the same quiet rhythm,

until you finally left.

There was an emptiness there.

I stepped outside

and saw shooting stars,

but my vision filled with light,

and I couldn't see.

You've been gone for years now,

but your faded silhouette

still burns

into the cracked paint

I guess I go back sometimes,

a form of pulling myself down.

I find myself weak.

I didn't think I could feel

so saturated by something so empty,

but it is hollowing me out.

I could have loved after you,

but something in me never left,

and I find myself with letters from the past

speaking to me

in your voice once again.

I thought I'd rid myself

of nights like this,

but I find myself craving

the pain you left behind in me.

Sometimes I don't care

if it scratches me raw

and bleeds me dry.

I'd lie in embers

and burn again,

my flesh melting into ashes,

leaving behind

what remains of me

as something

you could hold in your arms,

instead of the ghost

I've become.

But I'm left

with the smell of decay.

Rotting,

while the creatures of the night

tear into what remains.

Their lips

are closer to me

than yours may ever be,

but still,

I wish it were your teeth

tearing into me

I. @starlitecho00

Ever so far have I traveled,

seeking a love as pure and true

as the light I've found within his eyes,

a heavenly chorus illuminating my path.

The beckoning of forbidden fruit,

a predilection for candied temptation

laid before my famished lips.

He stirs a quickening in my pulse

as I inhale the promise of his kiss,

the sweetness of his mouth

an oasis in the desert of my desire.

A soft field for my heart to rest

as I surrender to his warm embrace.

II. @traveledlight

I found myself surprised to find someone on the same road I had walked alone for so long. How could I have been so blessed to find a reflection of my heart, beating in the same direction, singing in the rhythm of requited tenderness.

I found myself shaking at the way your eyes find mine, and I wonder what you see in them. Why does the thought of you make me weak?

Your fingers trace my lips in a gentle longing, planting the seeds of every future hunger that can only be watered as I grow within you.

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,

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.