ADR

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 when 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 to 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  t...

I knew it was over before anyone said it out loud. The sirens wailed, but no one ran. Gunshots in broad daylight. Between us, a body bleeds. When it happened, it felt like slow-motion agony. The pistol went off, the sound ringing in my ears. Every dime we ever spent on love hit the pavement, rolling away like scattered pearls. People screamed, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t rise above my biggest fear. They ask what happened. I don’t answer. I just look at your hands, still wet with blood, your breath, still steady. You don’t tremble. You don’t flinch. You just stand there like a man who’s done this before. Both hands on the smoking gun. I tried to save it. Pressed my hands against its chest, counted, begged, whispered prayers between desperate compressions. I swore I felt something—a gasp, a twitch, a sign that I wasn’t too late. So I kept going. Past exhaustion. Past reason. Past the moment you had already given up. You just stood there, watching, like someone who slows down to sight...

A broken ego tossed down the drain, a humming echo of a past that still resonates, a heart that beats out of habit instead of willfulness. Bandaids on bullet holes that won’t stop bleeding, silence so dreadful, you can hear your right ear ringing. ill-fated love story. if you knew there was to be a car crash in the greatest ride of your life, would you still hop in? I stare at the wreckage of something I once saw as unbreakable . from a place I never thought I'd be standing. I see it differently now. It doesn’t matter because the ship was always meant to sink. Exiled from my dreams. It’s not that we are not good people, but good people hold knives too. Sometimes to protect us, sometimes pressed against the throat of the other. My therapist asked why I didn't realize the worst part. That we were in love. Palpable, sunken, driven, covered. In love. It was all around us. Love wove itself into every breath, every glance, every word we exchanged. Why didn’t you kill me when you had ...

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 pulls me back. Hiding in the rearview. I thought I saw an angel, but… never mind. Burned the letters but kept the ashes, An  I love you  frozen in the wind. 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 that echoed back 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 grows, A compass...