This Speaks Volumes, If You Want to Hear It

 

Our course shifted that May night,
 something I didn’t want to admit—until it was too late.
 My gut touched my shoulder,
 whispered to change paths
 before the road disappeared beneath me.

I was young. I was scared.
 You had been my identity for so long,
 I wasn’t sure where I ended and you began.

You say I left.
 I say you did too.

Somewhere between the swallowed screams,
 nights we survived on ideals,
 at the verge of tears
 when truth pressed too close to my bruises—
 I should’ve left while I still had it in me.

I searched for signs
 in green buses, in stars,
 in the silence you wrapped around us
 like a coat we didn’t dare take off.

Hoping it wasn’t real.

Somehow, I lack the words to speak.
 That’s why I haven’t yet.
 The language I am
 is foreign.

But maybe just once
 let this reach you:

I would trade my ribs for one last hug.

Your silence burrows under my skin,
 settles in the hollows of my bones.´

I spend my days in analogies,
 weaving meaning into every stanza,
 believing
 that something new 
must be born 
out of the wreckage.

 a map from a war
 I haven’t woken up from.

4/4, 2025

Main Idea

Here I stand
before weary faces
a jury,
waiting for closure.

They’ve heard it all before.

I tell it once more,
but not in full.
Not the main idea
That would leave the room silent.

Whispering. Cautious omitting.
Eyes shifting,
waiting for me
to swallow back the truth.

My voice still shakes.
Not from fear,
not from grief
but from bending the truth
so it doesn’t cut too deep.

I clear my throat,

and try again
to make them understand:

How I was hurt.
How I hurt in return.
How neither of us
walked away clean.

But my voice dilutes in tears,
and I feel their exhaustion
Settle on my skin.

They don't want another retelling,

They want a conclusion.

But all I have are questions
knotted in my throat
like a swallowed scream.

I know the ending like muscle memory.

How my hands always knew
where to reach for you in the dark,
even when you weren’t reaching back.

But knowing is different
from accepting

what was ill-fated from the beginning.

I haven’t found the words
that don't make my gums bleed.

So I retrace the string,
tugging gently
at the edges of the past
picking at the wound
just to make sure
it still hurts
the way I remember.

Because I haven’t known
anything else since.

I search from the beginning:
the first wrong turn,
the first time I told myself
“He gets it.
He’s gonna change.”

The first time I chose silence
instead of asking
the questions
I didn’t want the answer to.

And yet
every time I get too close,
the world tilts,

My voice quivers,
My gut twists,
My sight blackens
the way it does

before impact,
before something inside me
decides it would rather
not remember after all.

Each time the past sharpens,
details surface

like ink in water.

I see it clearer
than I want to:

How I turned 

waiting into devotion,
absence into proof.

Still, I keep going over it

like a skipping record,
the needle scratching
over the same old wound

a jagged thing
that still aches,
spelling out:

July.

The jury asks:
“How did it end?”

I can’t admit it yet.

April 1st, 2025

A Pseudonym For Love.

A home that never learned my name,
I reached the shore just as the tide pulled away.
Loneliness disguised as freedom,
Your hands stained red with promises 
you couldn’t keep.
 
Uncertainty spoken to the deaf,
A language lost on a foreigner.
Running from myself, but the mirror grabs me by the throat.
Hiding in the rearview.
I thought I saw an angel, but… never mind.
 
Burned the letters but held the ashes in my mouth,
An I love you stuck in my throat.
A poem abandoned mid-thought,
Praying to a wordless God.
 
I ran from love for as long as I could
Until it knocked on my doorstep
In the ghost of you.
And I knew
It was time to pay my dues.
 
But I grew tired.
Tired of believing
In the conspiracy theory
That you’d grow a backbone
out of my patience.
Tired of whispers echoing
Phrases we once spoke
In our secret language.
 
I am tired 
of heartbreak,
And lovers
Who slammed the door so hard 
all pictures were shaking.
 
Another thing I ruined.
A bridge leading nowhere,
A garden where nothing blooms,
A compass that only spins
Because I lost your North.
Some doors lock from the other side.
 
I whisper into the void,
Does he love me?
but the echo spits back
Do you?
The last petal always lands on no,
No matter how many flowers I pull.
 
You left me as you found me.
Writing long-lost love letters
To all who abandoned me.
Only now, my scars scream your name.
 
Sadly, you realized:
The bridge trembles because I step on it.
The ship sank in sight of land.
And everything I’ve ever loved
Ends up bleeding poetry.
 
A pseudonym for love.
I stepped on the deck as the ship sailed away,
Hands on a map to a place that no longer exists.
Saving my last breath for a conversation that already ended.
 
I’m always a day late and a dollar short,
For everything meant for me.
 
Loving you was a maze,
I didn’t come out the same.
Some things are best kept buried,
I learned that the hard way.
 
A language neither of us speaks anymore.
Love letters collecting dust in a drawer of regret.
Your ghost still knocking at the door,
In a house I don’t live in anymore.
 
I live by a calendar of eleven months,
A year only 334-days long.
No more Julys to come.

And everything in our love’s field
Became landmine I don’t dare to cross.

February 14, 2025.