People believe possessive love is deadly but ignore that unrequited love is deadlier. It is the deadliest form of love. Watching your beloved in the dark with the point of view of a mere shadow, carried by the wind to a destination of no return. Loving everything about a person who smiles at someone else. Loving everything about a person when you know you can't get them. Staring at your beloved while they walk away with your heart everyday.

Sometimes I think of dying. And how people would react to it. I think about the last minute and wonder if I'll know it's it. Will people be more inconvenienced than sad? Will my pain linger in them a while? How long will my memory have. . . Will I be gone in a year? Two? Have I done anything that will last? Is my curiosity about after a symptom of my now or my before? Am I already in my after and have not accepted it yet? In my deepest heart. The heart i set for only me. I'm good, I deserve happiness and I deserve the years I live. But is that truthful? Is that a life that is only alive where only I can see. .. I been thinking about dying. I think there will be more love expressed for me for just a day than has been my whole life. Sometimes I'm eager to feel it. But will I? I been thinking about dying..

Each morning I watch my hand reach

for coffee, as if I’m the one who asked it to.

My cerebellum plays puppeteer,

yanking calcium channels like rigging,

while I—whatever I is—

watch from somewhere behind my eyes.

Scientists say free will

is just a story we tell ourselves

while dopamine pulls our strings.

But then, who’s telling the story?

Who’s watching the show?

Some say there’s a higher hand

above the skull-stage,

divine fingers threading down

through the cosmos, past satellites,

past weather balloons, past

our need to say

"up is where God lives"—

as if heaven could be mapped

by astronauts, as if transcendence

obeyed gravity’s rules.

But here’s the thing about puppets:

they don’t wonder who’s

moving their joints,

don’t write poems

about being puppets.

They don’t feel their strings

and call it consciousness.

They don’t trace them upward,

searching for meaning

in all that empty space

between synapses and stars.

Mirror holds

stranger's eyes —

both blink first

Time dissolves

in glass pools:

hours drown watching

Face wears

different masks:

all tell truth

Past lives

behind pupils —

future stares back

Wrinkles map

roads untaken:

skin keeps score

Years stack

in corners:

eyes grow heavy

Mirror whispers

ancient names:

memory drowns now

Glass ripples

with questions:

answers sink deep

Self splinters

into decades:

which one's real?

Reflection holds

longer talks

than reality allows

Morning finds

night's ghosts

still searching glass

I have mastered the art

of not seeing my reflection

in storefront windows,

of deleting emails

before the subject line

can pick my locks.

I have earned my PhD

in changing channels

when the news threatens

to make me responsible

for knowing better.

I am fluent in small talk,

that ancient language of

looking the other way.

Each "fine" and "busy"

a masterclass in building walls

from cotton candy.

My browser history reads:

"how to pretend

everything is okay"

"ways to stay positive

while the house burns"

"best noise-canceling headphones

for drowning out conscience"

I have practiced daily

the Olympic sport

of mental gymnastics,

gold medalist in

the hundred-meter dodge.

But these unread letters

keep piling up under my door,

and my mirrors refuse

to honor my right

to diplomatic immunity

from my own eyes.

There's a rebellion brewing in my bathroom mirror—

me, learning to love the geography of my face

while the world keeps trying to sell me

newer, better versions of myself.

This is how revolution begins:

with small acts of radical acceptance.

I collect their opinions like fallen leaves,

watch them pile up at my feet,

beautiful in their own way, but dead

and no longer feeding my roots.

The wind can have them.

My body is a democracy of cells

voting yes to existence

despite the constant propaganda

of magazine covers and sideways glances.

Let them whisper. My bones know

their own worth.

Remember: they called the first flowers weeds

until someone was brave enough

to make them into bouquets.

I'm done asking permission

to bloom in my own soil.

Some nights I practice saying my name

like it's a love poem,

even when their voices echo in my head

like stones dropped in an empty well.

The echo may last,

but I'm learning to drop roses after it.

They say I'm too much—

too loud, too soft, too sharp, too round.

I say: have you seen the ocean lately?

It doesn't apologize for its depths

or its shallows, its storms

or its silence.

So let them talk.

I'm building a home in my own skin,

hanging pictures of my accomplishments

on the walls of my ribcage,

painting my mistakes in gold leaf

because even they brought me here.

This is how you love yourself

in spite of:

You plant your feet like trees

and grow anyway.

Let them call it stubbornness.

We'll call it survival.

And when they ask why I insist

on taking up so much space

with this wild, untamed joy,

I'll point to the sky and say:

Have you ever seen a sunset

try to make itself smaller?

Waltz with me

Beneath the trees

Of plum

And burnished gold

I love you more

Than all the leaves

That swirl beneath our feet

Trying not to be triggered when it happens is like trying not to get stung in a swarm of bees whilst screaming and flailing your arms

It comes at you all at once

Without a fucking warning

And it attacks relentlessly

Like Ghost Face in Scream

All of a sudden freeze response takes over

I can't move

Ugly memories flood what could have been a pleasant next thought

Memories made of poison

Spreading throughout my body

It burns

It burns

Like a hot knife carving over a fresh bruise

Pushing further and further in

Yet not drawing blood

And I wait

For this sickening moment to pass

For it to no longer feel like my insides are exposed for the world to see

Inside out

Upside down

Naked

Burnt hot from seething rage

The shaking starts

Nausea creeps its ugly head

Always

Cold water splashes through the inferno

Thoughts spiralling

Running a million miles a minute

Heart follows like an impatient petulant little sister

“You have to Breathe” my therapist once said

“This is temporary, this will pass” yeah yeah

Bull shit

"Breathe in

breathe out"

Fingertip traces my hand as I

breathe in

and out

Write words on my legs with numb digits

Until my hands ache

There’s no one way to cope with it

It's going to take me this time

Wearing my comfort robe

I get in my bed

Put on HGTV

Drink cold cold ice cold water

The cold surrounds me now

Into the blankets I go

I’m inside myself again

Nothing else exists

Just here and now

My personal cocoon of dissociation

Locked away from the world full of want and need

No longer exposed, no more breathing heavily

My heart calmly beats

I don't belong to my memories

The Last Signal

Maya's fingers trembled as she adjusted the quantum receiver. After fifteen years of silence, the signal from Earth had finally arrived. She'd spent her entire adult life maintaining the Mars relay station, waiting for this moment.

The holographic message flickered to life. Her brother David's familiar face appeared, but aged far beyond his forty years. "Maya, if you're receiving this, the temporal anomaly worked. Earth is... gone. The quantum storms consumed everything within hours. But we managed to send this warning back through time."

Maya's throat tightened. The strange atmospheric readings she'd been detecting made sudden, terrible sense.

"The storms originated from our quantum communication experiments," David continued. "This message is probably what triggers them. I'm sorry. But you can prevent it all. The attached code will safely deactivate the relay network. You'll never receive this message, and Earth will survive."

Maya stared at the blinking prompt. Implementing the code would create a paradox, erasing this timeline – and her memories of David's warning – from existence. But it would save billions.

With tears blurring her vision, she initiated the shutdown sequence. The hologram flickered out. Maya felt reality shifting around her, memories fragmenting like scattered light. Her last thought was of David's face, and then...

Maya yawned and stretched in her chair at the Mars relay station. Another quiet day of monitoring silent frequencies, waiting for Earth's first quantum transmission.

Strange how ordinary it feels—

this slow departure,

like watching autumn leaves

release their hold.

My body remembers letting go

before I do: each breath

shorter than the last,

like tide going out.

The doctors speak of time

in careful measurements,

while I count moments

in heartbeats, in breaths.

How simple it becomes:

the sunlight on my hands,

the taste of water,

the weight of sheets.

I used to fear the darkness

waiting at the edge,

but now I see—it's only

the space between stars.

My children bring flowers

that fill the room with color.

I want to tell them dying

is just another shade of living.

Remember how we taught them

to swim? First the fear,

then the surrender,

then the floating.

The pain comes and goes

like weather. I watch it

pass through me,

neither fighting nor following.

In dreams, I practice

what's coming: each night

I lay my body down

like an old, beloved book.

How strange that all my life

I carried death within me,

the way a shell carries

the sound of the sea.

Soon I will be memory—

light caught in photographs,

stories told at dinner,

love gone into light.

But now, this moment:

breath entering,

breath leaving,

the perfect sufficiency of air.