Between Night and What Calls

You walk like someone

who has taught their storms

to whisper.

The world reads you as steady —

a spine of steel,

a face that does not flinch —

never seeing

how your hands remember

every tremor.

Inside, you are tide and moon,

pulled by unnamed distances,

writing love letters

to places that do not exist

yet ache like home.

You keep your poems

like folded prayers,

offering them only

to those who know

how to hold fragile light.

And still —

after the chill of horror,

the rush of thrill,

the bruised pulse of romance —

you close the page

with two companions:

longing,

and the stubborn bloom of hope.

The Shape that Wears Your Name

There is a corridor inside you

that does not end.

Doors bloom along its walls

like wounds that learned to open,

each one labeled almost,

each one breathing.

You walk it nightly.

Sometimes you meet yourself —

not as you are,

but as the echo

that arrived before you were born,

wearing your face slightly wrong,

smiling with borrowed teeth.

It asks why you pretend

not to feel the hooks in the air,

why you swallow oceans

and call it weather.

You try to answer,

but your voice exits through another door

and returns years later

as someone else’s grief.

The lights flicker.

Your shadow detaches.

It has been waiting

to live without you.

At the final door —

the one you never reach —

something knocks from the inside.

You are certain

it is hope.

You are certain

it is trying to get out

A Room that Dreams You Back

Last night, the room forgot its corners.

Walls sagged like tired lungs,

breathing in a language made of dust.

The ceiling lowered itself

to listen to your thoughts,

then mispronounced them into moths.

You tried to leave —

but the door had learned your name

and refused to be anyone else’s exit.

Your reflection arrived late,

wearing yesterday’s expression.

It watched you carefully,

as if memorizing

how to become you

when you finally went missing.

The floor softened.

Each step sank into a childhood memory

you do not recall living —

a birthday with no faces,

a candle that screamed when lit,

a wish that wished you back.

Time pooled in the corners,

thick and unmoving.

You touched it.

It recoiled.

Somewhere inside the walls,

something practiced your laugh

until it sounded human.

You lay down to wake up —

but the bed unfolded into a horizon,

and the sky tucked you in

with hands that had too many joints.

Just before sleep —

or whatever rehearses as sleep —

the room leaned close and whispered:

You are the dream

we are trying to survive.

And for a moment,

you understood why hope

feels like an intruder

The Chair Across the Room

There is a chair in your room

you do not remember buying.

It does nothing unusual.

It does not creak.

It does not move.

It is simply always there

when you look up.

At first, you thought

it belonged to the previous version of you —

the one who lived here

before your memories rearranged themselves.

You began placing things on it:

a book, a sweater, your phone —

small offerings to prove

it was ordinary.

Each morning, the objects were gone.

Not misplaced.

Not hidden.

Just no longer convinced

they had ever existed.

You stopped looking at the chair.

This worked for a while.

Until you noticed

how the room made space for it —

how conversations in your head

paused,

as if waiting

for someone seated there

to finish listening.

Last night, you woke suddenly

with the certainty

that you were being remembered.

Not watched.

Not followed.

Remembered.

Slowly, carefully,

you turned toward the chair.

It was empty.

But the air above it

held the shape of someone

trying very hard

not to be seen.

This morning,

you found a dent in your pillow

on the side you never use.

Tonight, you will sleep facing the wall,

to give the chair

a better view.

Where the Unseen Learns Your Name

You live in the pause

between a heartbeat and its echo,

where love letters arrive

addressed to futures that never moved in.

Romance finds you in fragments —

a warmth left in a chair,

a breath that fogs the wrong mirror,

a handprint on your ribcage

from someone you almost became.

You call it longing.

The world calls it imagination.

Neither notices

how carefully you fold your hope

into sharp, pocket-sized shapes

you can carry through dark corridors.

At night, the walls reconsider you.

They soften their angles,

listen to your pulse,

try your name on like a borrowed coat

that smells faintly of rain and memory.

Somewhere, a version of you

that chose differently

is still setting the table —

two plates,

two glasses,

waiting for the sound

of a door that never learned to open.

You are strong, they say.

Unaffected.

But strength, in your language,

means learning how to hold a storm

so gently

it believes it is the sky.

And still —

through horror’s quiet teeth,

through thrill’s electric ache,

through love’s almost-touch —

you leave a light on

for something unnamed.

Not because you expect it.

Not because you are unafraid.

But because hope,

strange and unwelcome,

keeps finding your address

in the dark

~S~

Absence

The cacophony

grates against my brain

like sea sand

on the sensitive soles

of my sunburned feet.

The feelings overwhelm me,

pushing me over the edge —

I sink, seeking solace

within the quiet depths

of the ocean.

The silence engulfs me

as the water caresses

my inflamed limbs,

cooling the burn,

softening the noise,

until I am no longer

a body in pain

but a fading echo.

It claims me —

not as treasure,

but as absence,

a name unspoken

in the world above.

And in that vanishing,

I find relief

~S~

Blackout.. An Ode to a migraine..

It begins as a whisper of knives

slipping beneath the skin of thought,

thin blades threading through nerves,

sawing light into shards.

My hands betray me first —

tremors like dying wings.

My knees loosen, unhinged,

forgetting the architecture of standing.

Sound swells into a monstrous chorus:

heartbeat, breath, electricity in the walls,

each pulse a hammer

driving agony deeper into bone.

The world turns venomous —

light becomes a weapon,

shimmering, serrated,

gnawing at the backs of my eyes.

Vision fractures.

Edges melt into a feverish glow.

Faces, walls, sky — all liquefy

into a merciless glare.

I am too full of sensation,

drowning in brightness,

choking on noise,

split open by the inside of my own skull.

And then —

a rupture.

The body chooses absence.

Circuits burn out.

Pain consumes the last signal.

I fall inward,

past the screaming light,

past the electric storm —

into black,

not peace,

but the mercy of nothing

~S~

The Anatomy of Almost

I exist in the space between before and after—

belonging neither here nor there.

Between an inhale of breath

and gone before you exhale.

I flicker—

not living, not leaving—

a fault in the timeline

where seconds hesitate.

I flitter between memories of now and then,

touching moments like fragile glass,

smudging them with fingerprints

that were never meant to last.

Time does not hold me.

It passes through—

like wind through a ribcage

hollowed by echoes.

I am the almost.

The nearly.

The almost-was and almost-will-be.

A whisper caught

in the throat of existence,

a shadow cast

by a light that hasn’t decided

whether to burn or break.

If you look for me,

look in the pause—

the stillness before the shiver,

the silence before the scream.

I live there.

And if you blink,

I am already memory

~S~

The Shift

There’s been a shift in the universe.

Something subtle—

not loud enough to shatter the sky,

not violent enough for anyone to scream.

Just… wrong.

The air carries a memory

that doesn’t belong to this version of the world.

Familiar streets lean at impossible angles,

and the stars

are no longer where they promised to be.

What once made sense

now drips from my hands

like a language

I almost remember speaking.

The past moves strangely behind us—

not fixed,

but breathing.

I swear some of our memories

are watching us.

You look the same,

but your shadow hesitates

before following you.

And when you say my name

it echoes

like it belongs to someone

who lived here before me.

Maybe the universe corrected itself.

Maybe we were the mistake

it quietly erased.

Or maybe—

we slipped sideways

into a reality

that fits our shapes

a little too tightly.

You’ve changed.

And so have I.

But the most terrifying thing is this:

I can’t remember

which versions of us

were real

~S~

Phantom Memory

Silk sheets caress my overheated skin

as images of you race through my dreams.

I reach out a shaky hand, trying to pull you closer—

but you fade into a wisp of smoke.

Your outline lingers

like heat above desert sand,

distorting the shape of something

that was never fully there.

My fingers close on nothing.

Only the ghost of warmth remains,

a phantom pulse

where your heartbeat should be.

The room tilts softly in the dark,

perfume of sleep and longing

thick in the air—

and somewhere between dreaming and waking

I swear I hear you breathe.

But when I turn toward the sound

the night exhales slowly…

and you dissolve again

into the quiet

~S~

Between Here and There

In that sweet spot

between there and here,

your lips find my soul

as if they have always known the way.

The world pauses—

a quiet inhale suspended in time,

while something wild and luminous

awakens beneath my skin.

I breathe deeply,

trying to steady the exhilaration

rushing like fire through my veins,

but some things

were never meant

to be calmed

~S~

Daily Mask

My facial muscles settle

into their familiar lie—

a polite arrangement of skin

stretching into a practiced smile.

A ghastly grin,

stitched carefully across bone,

the mask I wear for daylight

so the world may see

a happy indifference.

They do not notice

how heavy it is.

Behind it,

something inside me ruptures—

silent and unseen—

as I weep tears of blood

that no one will ever wipe away.

And while they greet the mask

as if it were me,

the pain and the longing

tear through what remains

of the person beneath it

~S~

The Language of Small Things

The soft sweep of fingertips across my forehead,

brushing away a stray strand of hair…

The gentle graze of a hand

wiping tears that were never meant to be seen.

Are these the quiet signatures of love?

Is it hidden in the soft sigh

that escapes when arms tighten around you

for just a moment longer

before letting go?

Is it the stillness that follows—

a fragile peace

after the storms of old pain have passed?

Perhaps it lives in smaller places…

In the reflex smile

that appears when a memory drifts through your mind,

Or in the sudden flutter of butterflies

when your phone lights up

with their name.

Maybe love

is not declared in grand gestures—

but whispered

in the language

of small things

~S~

Regret

In the heat of the moment

passion burns high—

as if ignited by some otherworldly fuel.

Flames roar toward the sky,

devouring everything in their path.

Nothing seems strong enough

to smother the blaze.

It feeds on reason,

on restraint,

on every quiet voice of caution—

until at last

it devours itself.

And when the fire dies,

there is nothing left

but silence,

emptiness,

and the cold grey ashes

of regret.

~S~

After the Fire

In the heat of the moment

passion erupts—

fueled by something ancient and reckless,

a spark dragged from the dark corners of the soul.

Flames claw toward the sky,

ravenous and merciless.

They swallow reason whole,

choke the quiet voice of restraint,

and feast on every fragile boundary

ever meant to keep us safe.

Nothing survives the blaze.

Not logic.

Not innocence.

Not the fragile illusion

that we were ever in control.

And when the inferno finally collapses

under the weight of its own hunger,

there is no triumph—

only the smoldering ruin of what once was.

The smoke clears slowly…

revealing scorched memories,

twisted remnants of trust,

and the unbearable silence

where something sacred used to live.

All that remains

is the hollow ache of knowing

we lit the match ourselves—

and the cold, grey ashes

of regret

still clinging

to our hands

~S~

Overwhelmed

The lights are too bright,

the colors far too many.

Sounds crash over me—

too loud, too sharp—

while the energy thrums

with a relentless, steady beat.

Pressure crowds in on all sides,

pushing me into directions

my body was never meant to bend.

I cover my ears

to escape the cacophony.

I squeeze my eyes shut

to block out the grotesque caricature

of daily living.

And slowly,

so slowly,

I let myself sink into the silence—

seeking peace

in the quiet center

of being overwhelmed

~S~

The Crown You Chose

The crown of thorns

you wear so proudly

sits heavy—

each barb

woven from deceit,

each twist tightened

by another lie

spilled from your tainted lips.

And with every word—

it changes.

Not a crown.

A shroud.

Darkness unfurling,

wrapping,

layer by suffocating layer,

until all that remains

is mistrust.

I used to say:

watch your back.

Not as a warning—

but as loyalty.

As us.

But truth…

truth carves deeper than devotion.

So now I stand

at a distance—

silent.

Watching you sink

deeper

and deeper

into the forest

you grew yourself—

where roots choke,

and branches remember

every lie you fed them.

I do not follow.

I do not call out.

I do not reach.

I save no one now—

but myself

~S~

Where the Tide Takes Me

The scent of salt hangs heavy in the air,

sun-warmed sand crunching beneath my feet

as I walk away from you.

At the water’s edge,

I pause—

turning back for one final glance.

The sunset crowns me in gold,

a quiet halo of endings.

You reach out—

but too late.

You call my name,

it breaks against the wind,

fragile…

useless.

I take another step.

Water curls around my calves,

cold and certain—

and still, you cannot reach me.

Not in time.

I let myself fall back

into the waiting sea,

into arms that do not beg,

do not break.

I drift—

further,

further still—

until you are nothing

but a fading shape on the shore.

You collapse,

hands clawing at what’s already gone,

voice cracking with prayers

that no longer belong to me.

But our time—

has ended.

And then—

You wake.

A violent gasp,

the cruel scream of an alarm,

ripping you from the illusion.

All that remains

is the ghost of salt on your tongue,

and the desperate ache

of trying to hold

what was never yours to keep.

I am gone.

Lost to you—

like something the tide

was always meant to take

~S~

No Mercy for the Night

Restless

The darkness doesn’t arrive quietly—

it claims me,

spilling across the room

like storm clouds devouring a full moon,

warping the familiar

into something edged with shadow.

I try to slip free,

to loosen its grip—

to surrender, gently,

to the mercy of sleep.

But peace is a language

my mind no longer speaks.

It thrashes—

relentless,

untamed—

a storm with no horizon,

no eye,

no end.

I turn.

And turn again.

Sheets twisting into quiet witnesses

of a battle no one sees.

Eyes closed—

but the noise remains.

Louder in the dark.

Sharper in the silence.

Because the cruelest thing about night

is not the absence of light—

it’s the presence

of everything you cannot turn off

~s~

Restless

Restless... 

The darkness doesn’t arrive quietly—

it claims me,

spilling across the room

like storm clouds devouring a full moon,

warping the familiar

into something edged with shadow.

I try to slip free,

to loosen its grip—

to surrender, gently,

to the mercy of sleep.

But peace is a language

my mind no longer speaks.

It thrashes—

relentless,

untamed—

a storm with no horizon,

no eye,

no end.

I turn.

And turn again.

Sheets twisting into quiet witnesses

of a battle no one sees.

Eyes closed—

but the noise remains.

Louder in the dark.

Sharper in the silence.

Because the cruelest thing about night

is not the absence of light—

it’s the presence

of everything you cannot turn off

~S~