Maybe this appears when you linger 
You look at the carousel of bags and wonder  
Did it or you got left behind 
Are you carrying more than you should 
When thoughts resonates deeply in silence 
The set up of intentions for control 
Everything a manifestation of a past mantra 
What the eyes can’t see 
Won’t hurt 

This quiet ache

Refused to linger in a crowded room

Nor required wine to float

Pulling off another performance

Felt like a removal of another spark or tearing out a page

The tuning fork

Roamed the silent cemetery of text

That was home

Table by the window 

Seated at a distance

Watching the rewind

Would listening be different now

There is no return 

Nothing but a name

I sat across the table we sat

Searching shadows 

Smelling the rain 

Feeling the breeze 

Heavy on the inside 

Holding back to reach 

It is not right 

Another route, maybe

Flirted with the idea.

The other one.

But what is that even for?

How many times does the cycle rerun

before I forget why I hated the reruns in the first place?

What’s the price of being wanted—

and why is it still too cheap and too expensive at once?

Is it absence? Or a craving for chaos dressed as clarity?

Do I chase the noise because silence reminds me

of everything I don’t say out loud?

There’s that moment before regret

where it still feels like a good idea—

and sometimes I just want to live there.

Right there.

Before the ruin.

I’m not where I should be.

And I hate saying that out loud, even to myself.

Nothing’s broken, but nothing fits.

And that’s almost worse.

Crossroads, static

Paused at the edge.

Phone in hand.

One text would echo like a ping through water—

I know it’d reach you.

I know you’d come.

Quick.

Clean.

No questions.

But I didn’t.

I walked.

Stopped.

Bought something to sip,

Not for the taste,

but for the time it bought me.

I just needed to not crash into something again.

To slow the reel.

To not be a rerun.

As we live different lives 

Telling lies for the need of a little comfort

This isn’t love 

This is how loneliness looks in this world 

Withholding truth and words 

The constant need to filter mind and feelings 

Using delayed responses and changed settings to remain unseen and recent 

Funny how things changed 

Extending grace to understand and meet the new you

Who are you now in this season 

Not recognising that person in the photos 

Reawakening at 23 but 37 

The spider and the butterfly

I can’t seem to fly 

I don’t want you to know what this means so holding back and keeping it in is how I turn the blade inward and leave the war within. Not taking it out. You’ve got nothing to prove. It isn’t you that I’m fighting it is me. I’ve done this to myself and it is lonely here. It is easy for some to shut down their spirals but I know this is my path I need to take to figure it out. At the end of the spiral, what do I see? Do I finally see myself at the core. You’ve shown me the short cuts but my legs and heart refuse to take them. So I lay here using this tension as writing materials. 

The last five years have not given me a chance to breathe and make sense of all the transitions, loss, traumas and discovery of self and new needs. The lines are tested. I didn’t realize I could remove them. What I knew have fallen like sandcastles at the beach. There’s where I want to be. 

I’ve seen your past life 

Displayed 

And I can’t help wonder 

But know for sure 

It wouldn’t had been a good time 

I would have scoffed and ghosted 

It’s funny how we change silently 

Not big loud celebratory ones 

It’s a quiet shift 

Maybe filters helped we said 

Strange isn’t it an ache 

It’s there and again why 

You don’t know what you don’t 

You can’t have what you don’t know 

Maybe not seeing 

Just knowing through words and stories 

Wouldn’t matter so much 

Weren’t we all surviving in the only ways we knew then 

The danger, speed and travels 

Moments made tangible with others 

And that’s how we kept walking 

To meet who we are supposed to 

When it’s time