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~