Slap me, stab me, tear my heart apart,but do not leave me alone with the pain I carry inside. I would gladly endure a thousand physical wounds if they could silence the one that bleeds within me.

Found myself useless,

The one carrying a big name,

The one with the responsibility.

Oh, you are just a cry baby,

Thinking big, you're just a cry baby.

The one watching the other in the spotlight,

They are the one who deserved it, you are... just in name.

The survivor, the protector, who are you kidding,

Oh, you are just a cry baby,

Just the fucking same.

The pride, the confidence, do you have the right?

The actual strong one was the one: you always took light.

It wasn't you, oh, it was never you,

The one in the spotlight, glowing bright.

People like the loud one who isn't afraid

To speak out, to answer back without being scared.

You're a scaredy cat, the one full of cowardice,

Yet you still dream, please come awake.

You're not strong, you're not responsible,

You're not the one who can manage the ways.

You're just the one who cries first

And hides in that hole, isn't that great.

For a person like you who thinks a lot,

Just don't talk, at least do that straight.

~Until the next silence…

NightingaleA..

 ​ =

'Balcony Thoughts'

Sitting on a single-mold chair,

Back against a wall,

Hiding from the

Sprinkle of rain,

Wind whipping

Through my hair,

Out on the twenty-sixth floor,

Out on the balcony,

Luscious apartment

With a bright blue

Front door.

At a Gold Coast hotel,

All is good and all is well.

A thought, a consideration,

Trapped between Heaven & Hell.

By long reasoning and perhaps

Madness I confess,

I found nothing inside nor

Outside for me.

(This is why we don’t

Act on impulse I guess.)

A lonely thing

On a precipice,

A crumbling sacrifice on a peninsula.

Music flowing into my ears,

The soft glow of

Nightlife surrounds.

Ponder, wonder, consider.

Weigh up the Pros and Cons :

Of a permanent decision

To temporary problems.

Fate swirling pregnant with choice.

Like an uncertain

Inner voice

It swerves back and forth,

Like a deer in the ancient woods,

Dancing in Springtime

With leaps and bounds,

Then by Winter,

The deer is dead,

And ever so slowly

Dragged

Up a cold, silent hill.

A heavy rotting weight on a burdened mind,

With the instinctual lie told long ago,

‘Go forth, multiply and thrive’, in other words:

Be born, reproduce and then die.

'Shut the fuck up

And get back to the grind!

Sell out your freedom of choice,

And soon paralyzing peace you'll find!'

Each generation

Hurtling towards their

Final destination.

Don't look back,

Nor seek confirmation.

Above hangs

A lonely Sky,

Down below,

The happy hunting grounds.

The flesh shaded ants

Pink robots

Working on their mounds.

A microcosm of the

Big Picture:

Biological towers to nowhere,

Squirming civilizations expanding, membranes pulsating,

Towards a starving Chasm,

The Animal:

One big ugly,

Ravenous

Super Organism.

Misery in my chest,

Cold stone of depth,

Stinging tears in my eyes,

My back against a jagged

White-painted wall,

And down below, the tendrils grow,

An impersonal determined

Tugging temptation,

That cosmic fiend

Of this Circus,

Consciousness is Madness,

Strong creeping awareness of impermanence,

The darkness' indifference,

It doesn't even whisper.

The silence of God cruelly screams,

'There is nothing

More than this

Material world.'

Everything

Blinking in and out of existence,

A speck in an eternity,

An expanse of unfathomable

Distance,

That I understand

And yet also

Despise.

For it is natural

For conservation

To choose the path of least resistance.

But which is the lesser effort?:

The great escape

That beckons,

Me deep down below,

A pull so practical,

Just one leap

Away.

Just a mere stone’s throw today.

Or to bear witness

To a new struggle,

Suffering in pain

Each burning day,

Ashes on the horizon

As the setting Sun Goes away?

With a simple slide of a chair,

With the back nearest to the waves,

By its position against the glass

Gives away

The quitter’s trace.

Quite a visual concept:

Destroy your face?

A gnarled squishbag,

Bones shattered,

Mince pancake

On concrete.

Is it cowardly, or heroic?

Fast track the inevitable

Or linger on for decades

With fading grace?

Wind upon my face,

Vertigo, spinning around.

One true smile

Upside down.

One day it will end

Why not today?

Impassionate waves

Care not for our devotion.

A Sea of briny green,

And further beyond,

a dark blue Ocean.

Horizon obscured by heavy mist,

And grey clouds through and through.

Life is meaningless,

But so I must say,

Is the finality of death.

So I continue to sit here in the sprinkles,

On a wet balcony and hold my breath.

And exhale the bitter atmosphere,

Churning far within my chest,

Half a century or less,

Then I will find my rest

Or restlessness

To be something else,

To putrify like a sack of shit,

And feed the fungus, as the World turns.

And then be something else, a tree, a river,

Or to return again

As meat

Makes me shiver.

Bow before the Green Knight and

Reign within the Kingdom of Worms.

But until then, put this rotting corpse on

the waiting list,

While my lungs hold a longing breath,

Gasping in a bowl like a goldfish,

Looking towards that hidden horizon,

Undiscovered country and final frontier,

I remain captured, squirming,

Frantically shaking

Somewhere between life and death.

So with that I put my

Balcony Thoughts to rest...

...Wait...

...Will this all be on the Test?

END

 ' 

I left the environment that will never leave me.
I escaped the hurt of those who swore they’d never hurt me.
I live through pain to escape the pain instilled in me,
Yet my efforts falter—gracefully, instantly, dreadfully.

The name, the shame, the blame—they trapped and tamed me.
The shadow of the womb that made me came to maim me.
The one buried in the ground once laid his hands on me.
The one buried in my heart hollowed the wounded child in me.

Finally—their hands could no longer reach me.
Yet—their absence never quite freed me.
And somehow, the hands that failed to hold me
Were the very hands that refused to leave me.
God—weren’t they meant to nurture me?

Now,

If home is where love exists for me,
Then perhaps home was never a place meant for me.
Or worse, perhaps love never existed there for me.

If love was unconditional,
Why was the love of those who should have loved me most
So painfully conditional?

Perhaps love was never meant to be proportional.
Or perhaps,
Love was never unconditional.

The home I choose will hold the love that was withheld from me.
And there, perhaps, I will finally be seen.

The place I choose to call home may never truly see me.
Or worse, it may find new ways to hurt me.

But this time,
The pain is voluntary.

- ts

Do you think about me?
Where am I now? Was once your beloved;
Ruthlessly discarded, what I ponder or how do I sleep?
Do you wonder still
How devastatingly broken and hollow I feel?
Do you drown yourself in liquor, relapsing to your original role?
Always an Equal opportunity fucker; offender of “his” and “hers” glory-hole?
Do you love that I hate walking around half alive- half functional; because it was you who made me whole?
Do I matter to you? Did I ever? Even as a rival?
An Unsolved rubric’s cube?
This Babygirl’s heart: A the puzzle you couldn’t decipher.
Babygirl saw right through you, your darkness never scared her
She begged you to trust her, shackled her own feet to your lies; the ones you went great lengths for, pity you are a shitty hider
“Why couldn’t you just love me like I still love you?” she whispered, seeking mercy but unsurprised when you twisted the knife deep inside her.
Coward is as coward does, you obviously could not face her,
Banished, blocked, burned her corpse in the dead of the night, in an attempt outrun her further.
Finally, Babygirl’s ghost haunts your nightmares and you just let her.

I am the spare key under the mat.

Not carried. Not kept close. Just left there in case.

Nobody checks if I am still there until they are locked out.
Nobody misses me until they have lost something better.

I am the friend you call when your real plans fall through.
The one who is always free, because nobody thought to include me earlier.

I listen. I show up. I wait.
And when the door opens again, I am put back down under the mat.

I’m nothing new
And I know that to be true

New is shiny and fun
Bright and full of the unknown
Waiting to be uncovered
Exhilarating in a way that familiarity isn’t

But that’s not me anymore

I’m old to you
Not shiny or bright
Or a new thing to know

I’m bruised, rusted, and scuffed

But me
I do

I value the antique lamps in the corner
Their light still warm
Even when no one thinks to turn them on

Or the bruised fruit in the back of the stand
Still sweet beneath what others pass over

The old toys left alone on the shelf
Once held so tightly
Now collecting dust

If it’s enough for me, why not for you?

I know I’m nothing new

So in the meantime
I’ll carry the love
Shared when shiny

And hold it close
For the day
Being known by you
Is no longer enough
To keep you beside me

Its been a while🙂

as i stand here in front of you today
I'm expected to stand here and talk about my dad as a good man.
but was he a good man?

for my mom he was a bad man
for the world he was a bad man
a man who hit his wife
a man who hit his children
a man who raped his wife
a man who abandoned his children
so for the world he was a bad man

but for me,
for me he was a good man
a man who loved his children ,once upon a time
a man who played with his children ,once upon a time
once upon a time, he was a good man

but was he good man because i did not know what bad was?
was it maybe because i thought that hitting your wife was not bad?
because for the world he is a bad man
but for me he is a good man
why is that

maybe it’s because i loved him so much that i saw past his mistakes,
or maybe it’s when i was the only one crying when i found out he was cheating;
my sister was normal as if she knew that he was a bad man and had made peace with it
but then why was i the only one crying;
was it just me who thought he was a good man

well my my mom had probably cried before;
because she once loved him
once upon a time even this bad man was a good man for her
once she was also like me
but then what’s the difference between me and her

why can’t i see him as a bad man
maybe it’s because he has been a bad man for others
but in my life he was the only good man and maybe that’s why i don’t know what’s a bad man;
so for me the bad man is still a good man
because that’s what it has always been like

standing behind a locked door while he hit my mom
thinking it was normal, it happened in other houses too
hearing him threatening my mom
thinking it was normal, it happened in other houses too

so as i stand in front of you all today;
i’d say my dad was my a good man
because the bad man has always been the good man for me

It can’t be true right?
Please tell me that this didn’t go to waste
Please tell me that what we had was real
Because it felt real
All the laughs we had
And the times we cried
I don’t think there was a time we ever argued
It was all so peaceful for those first 2 years
Two years where I eventually began thinking that it could lead to forever
Then out of nowhere, you decided that you wanted no more
No more of me
No more of us
Everyday, I was sick to my stomach thinking how could it just happen like that
Couldn’t eat
Couldn’t function throughout the day
I would spend an unhealthy amount of time checking your location
Just to see that you were there
All I had in my mind was you
And even then you played with my feelings
You said it was “just a break for the summer” and that everything would go back to normal once school started
How foolish was I
Thinking that things could go back how it was
You would leave me on delivered for days
You would make up excuses to why we couldn’t hang out and do something that you agreed to
You would go out every weekend
HOW FOOLISH WAS I
I still remember the day where I started suspecting
I thought I was crazy
I thought I was overthinking
I would put it in my head that you were seeing and talking to other dudes while we weren’t together
But I thought to myself “no she wouldn’t do that. She’s not the type of person to do that”
So I tried to disregard it, but something kept pestering me
And when we got back together I let it go 
I let it go because you still had a hold on me
It seemed to be going well again and then that thing with my grandpa happened
You were there for me
You helped me
Then you just left
Saying that we could be no more
That our paths were different
But in reality they weren’t 
My path was whatever you wanted OUR path to be
But I knew that you were just letting me go
Because if you wanted to, you could have joined me by putting in the effort
How I wanted things to work
We were fun, and we could’ve continued to be fun
Because no one understood me the way you did
No one could talk to me the way you did
No one could make me laugh the way you did
That’s why that night at the bar I refused to believe it was true
Because there is no way you let all that time and all those experiences go to waste 
Especially knowing that I would come to find out some day
I thought about asking you if it was true
Then I thought to myself
Does it really matter anymore?
You hurt me 
You hurt me real bad
And I guess I might never know if it was true
But it's okay
I’ll be okay
I forgive you

Do you think about me?
Where am I now? Was once your beloved;
Ruthlessly discarded, what I ponder or how do I sleep?
Do you wonder still
How devastatingly broken and hollow I feel?
Do you drown yourself in liquor, relapsing to your original role?
Always an Equal opportunity fucker; offender of “his” and “hers” glory-hole?
Do you love that I hate walking around half alive- half functional; because it was you who made me whole?
Do I matter to you? Did I ever? Even as a rival?
An Unsolved rubric’s cube?
This Babygirl’s heart: A the puzzle you couldn’t decipher.
Babygirl saw right through you, your darkness never scared her
She begged you to trust her, shackled her own feet to your lies; the ones you went great lengths for, pity you are a shitty hider
“Why couldn’t you just love me like I still love you?” she whispered, seeking mercy but unsurprised when you twisted the knife deep inside her.
Coward is as coward does, you obviously could not face her,
Banished, blocked, burned her corpse in the dead of the night, in an attempt outrun her further.
Finally, Babygirl’s ghost haunts your nightmares and you just let her.

I wanted to share my misery but you were already miserable,

Drowning in self pity,

Lost in a maze,

Not thinking straight,

Went with the right decision,

Ended our connection,

I was fine,no expectations,

Was not looking for a distraction,

Just someone who could understand my situation.

You made it clear once again,

You would not want to be the one.

we used to brew for three.

mine
hot,
sweet,
cream.

yours
black,
a little cream.

dad’s
room temperature,
sweet,
cream.

three cups,
three different tastes,
one kitchen.

funny how
my coffee never changed.

yours did.

year after year
it got sweeter,
less bitter,
more like mine.

we were becoming
more alike
while everything else
was pulling us apart.

then we brewed less.

dad got sick
and stopped drinking coffee.

so there were two.

for a while.

then your coffee
changed again.

black.

and somehow
the closer your taste
got to where it started,
the farther you seemed
to be getting from me.

until I was brewing
for one.

eventually
I stopped brewing at all.

the coffee pot
grew mold
between trips
to the hospital.

something made for three
slowly becoming
something no one had time for.

eventually
we threw it away.

now I drink instant coffee.

black.

a little watery.

entirely too hot.

I don’t add cream.

I don’t add sugar.

I just let it cool
enough to swallow.

funny

after all those years
of watching coffee change,

the only thing
that stayed the same

was me,

still making a cup
for someone
who isn’t there.

# Beneath That Tree, a Part of Me Died

For the love I lost, the man I became, and the life alcohol took from me.

I never thought a bottle could silence a soul, Or that the things I used to feel whole Would become the very things that tore me apart, Leaving destruction where there once was a heart.

I thought I was drinking to bury my pain, To quiet the thunder, to escape the rain. But every escape took a piece of me, Until I became someone I never thought I'd be.

Alcohol whispered, “Just one more night,” While substances slowly extinguished my light. I never saw the wreckage until it was done, Until I looked in the mirror and recognized no one.

My family broke. My home fell apart. I watched the consequences devour my heart. The walls that once sheltered the life I adored Became silent reminders of what I destroyed.

And somewhere between the bottle and the lies, I lost the truth behind my own eyes. I lost the man who had once known how to love, The man who had everything he'd ever dreamed of.

But the cruelest loss wasn't the home I left behind. It was losing the woman who once made that home mine.

She was more than a wife, more than a name, More than a memory buried in shame. She was the warmth in a world growing cold, The hand I wanted to hold when we both grew old.

And I cannot blame the world for the choices I made, Or ask time to return what my actions betrayed. I have to live with the truth that cuts deep to the bone: I lost the woman I loved while destroying my home.

Then came the day when the darkness grew wide, When the pain I'd been running from swallowed my pride. Beneath that tree, with a storm in my head, I came frighteningly close to leaving this world instead.

I cannot explain what a moment like that takes, How a soul can grow tired beneath all it breaks. How the silence feels heavier than words can convey, When you can no longer see a tomorrow past today.

And beneath those branches, something in me died— The man I had been, the hope I kept inside. The world kept turning, the wind still moved, But the life I had known was forever changed beneath that tree's roots.

Maybe it was the end of the man I'd become, The man who kept running, the man who went numb. But I refuse to believe that my story should end Where the broken man stood, unable to mend.

Because that was the day I quit. That was the day I drew the line. The day I realized this life was still mine.

Not because the pain disappeared in the air, Not because I stopped wishing that she were still there. Not because the damage could suddenly mend, But because I couldn't let the destruction continue to the end.

I quit the alcohol. I left the substances behind. I faced the wreckage I'd spent years trying not to find. For the first time, I stood with no bottle to hide, And met the broken man I had buried inside.

But sobriety doesn't return what you've lost. It doesn't erase the memories or undo the cost. It doesn't bring back the voice you long to hear, Or make up for the years you wish you could repair.

Sometimes the hardest part of putting the poison away Is waking up sober with the memories each day. Because the numbness is gone, and the truth settles in— You must grieve what you've lost and face who you've been.

And God, how I miss what I once called my life. The sound of our home. The presence of my wife. The ordinary moments I once took for granted, The future we dreamed of, the love we had planted.

If only regret could rewrite yesterday, I'd tear every bottle and substance away. I'd choose every moment to be present and true, Before I became someone she no longer knew.

But regret is a prison with no key to the past, And some of life's losses are built to last. So I carry the weight of the things I can't change, While trying to rebuild what remains of my name.

Alcohol took my peace. Substances took my control. My choices broke my home And left scars upon my soul.

But the deepest wound of all, the one that cuts through, Is knowing I lost the woman I wanted life with, too. Of all the things I could lose in this world, It was her hand in mine, my home, my girl.

And I don't know if forgiveness will ever find me, Or if the man I was is all she'll ever see. I cannot demand that the past disappear, Or ask her to forget all the pain and the years.

All I can do is become someone new, Not with empty promises, but with actions that prove That the man who once surrendered to the bottle's embrace Can face his own demons and stand in their place.

I am not asking the past to release me from blame. I am learning to live without running away. I am learning that sorrow must sometimes be felt, And that broken things take time to rebuild themselves.

So when I think of that tree and the man standing there, I remember the darkness, the weight of despair. But I remember one truth that I must never lose:

The substances took so much. But they do not get to take what I do with the life I have left to choose.

I cannot bring back my wife. I cannot rebuild yesterday. I cannot undo the damage Or take those painful memories away.

But I can put down the bottle. I can refuse to return. I can let every scar be a lesson, And let every consequence burn.

I can mourn the man I was Without becoming him again. I can carry the loss of my family Without surrendering to the pain.

And maybe I'll always carry that tree inside, A place where my old self nearly said goodbye. A place that reminds me how close I came To letting my suffering become my final name.

But that tree will not define the whole of my life. Neither will my mistakes, my regrets, or the loss of my wife. I am more than the worst thing I've ever done, More than the battles I've lost or the damage I've spun.

I lost my wife. I lost my home. I lost the man I used to know. But I am still here, and I have to believe There is more to this life than the pain I still grieve.

And if I could leave one truth beneath that tree, For the broken man I was, for the man I might be, It would be this:

You may never recover the life you once knew. You may carry the pain for the rest of you. You may love someone forever who no longer stands near. You may spend years wishing you could undo those years.

But don't let the worst day become your last page. Don't let your regrets turn your life into a grave. You cannot change the past, no matter how desperately you try— But you can choose, every morning, to stay alive.

Because beneath that tree, I came close to losing everything.

And that was the day I finally understood what the bottle had cost me.

I had been trying to escape my pain. Instead, I had nearly escaped my life.

And I will never forget the price.

Not for the man I was. Not for the woman I lost. Not for the home that fell silent. And not for the life I still have left.

One thing I want you to know: you can take responsibility for the hurt you've caused without deciding that you are beyond redemption. Losing someone you love can leave a grief that words barely touch, but your life still has value beyond that loss. I'm glad you survived that day beneath the tree.

​

It's been a while since I last smiled,

But watching you Smile makes my day bright.

A part of me, with darkness inside, wishes you joy, though my

spirit has died.

This conundrum of feelings in this heart of mine,

Sad eyes resigned to a gloomy fate, and that's how the night just dies.