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I trace the contours of this alchemy,
Charting hidden forces in the galaxy.
Alive on a rock in a sky full of stars —
Yet we forget the miracle this is,
Trapped in a system that leaves us with scars,
Driven by need, and devoured by hunger.

Life itself — a quiet kind of magic —
Which makes what follows all the more tragic.
A fire rages, buried deep in me,
Burning in places
No one can see.

For all my striving, for all my wisdom,
I can’t find a way to exist in this system.
I was not born to survive in a cage,
To trade my light for minimum wage.
They ask me to shrink, to silence the song,
But the music inside me is centuries long.

They fear what they can’t understand,
So they hand me a leaflet
And call it a plan.
But I was made of questions,
Of patterns and flame —
Not for this circus
That plays the same game.

Spirit, body, and mind —
I’ve fought to keep them aligned.
Shaped myself like a lump of clay,
Measured my life
One percent a day.

But I toiled under a false premise,
That this world would reward the climb.
And now I’m standing in the wreckage,
Realizing — it never saw me,
Not even one time.

Where is there left for me to turn,
But to step back, and watch it burn?
To deny the world the worth it won’t see.
Let the smoke rise where I once stood —
A ghost made of fire, misunderstood.
4d · 63
Complicit
We scroll past hunger,
Swipe through war,
Stream genocide like a genre
And call it being informed.
“You saw. You know. You are responsible,” they say,
As if we even have a hand to play.
They told us we are free,
Capable of changing all we see,
Masters of our fate,
Sculptors of tomorrow,
With tools made of choice
And maps etched in will
It’s never too late to find our voice.

They handed us mirrors,
Called them windows,
Taught us to vote,
A choice in the clownshow,
A chorus of masks all painted for show,
Just noise in a system too broken to grow.

We scroll past hunger,
Swipe through war,
Stream genocide like a genre
And call it being informed.
“You saw. You know. You are responsible,” they say,
As if we even have a hand to play.

But we are tethered
To systems too vast,
To machines too smooth,
To powers too cloaked.
Each of us a droplet,
Told we are the sea.
Told we are free.

Meanwhile, the giants feed,
Corporations gorge on grief,
Turn crisis into content,
They market empathy,
Sell back our outrage,
Anything to keep us engaged.

Work, once sacred,
Just motion now.
We turn cogs that turn nothing
And call it survival.

There is too much,
Too many truths,
Too many hands reaching from fires
We cannot put out.
We are choked by abundance,
Starving for sense.

So let the bombs rain.
Let the sky split open.
If collapse is the only honesty left—
Let it fall.
Let it fall
And save us from this pain.
Jun 14 · 45
Free me
Let them follow lines well-laid,
Their scripted paths in safe charade.
But don’t hold me to your labels and limits,
Drawn from shortcuts and fleeting minutes.

Let me be, let me fly,
To map my uncharted sky
I am flawed, lost in the depths,
Since I heard the silence beneath their steps.
Their map is lean—lines, signs and names,
Not seeing beyond the truth they claim.

Through their shortcuts, they place me in a cage,
A simple outline, they miss the weight behind the stage-
What’s soft, unseen, warped by age,
With complexity they cannot engage.

This map of mine holds space, nuance, weight,
Unmarked roads and altered states,
It charts the shifts of inner skies,
The truths that flicker in disguised eyes.
It honours detours, dwells in pause,
And bends around unspoken laws.

They see it, flawed, lost, estranged,
Too raw, too complex, too unarranged.
But their neat world cannot gauge the cost,
Of all the knowing they’ve lost

Let them follow lines well-laid,
Their scripted paths in safe charade.
But don’t hold me to your labels and limits,
Drawn from shortcuts and fleeting minutes.

Let me be, let me fly,
To map my uncharted sky
May 7 · 42
Fragmentation
Survival’s a game,
Played without the rules,
Adapting, changing,
Yet seen as the fool.
Labeled wrong,
When I only tried to breathe,
Met with resistance,
What’s left to believe?

So I began to slip,
Let the fight drain from my grip.
Each label stitched with quiet scorn,
Made me smaller than I was born.
I wore erasure like a second skin —
To be forgettable was how I kept myself in.
May 7 · 143
I, forgotten
Please, I beg:
I’ll do anything not to be.
And if that wish is too big,
I’ll do anything to hide where you can’t see.

I shrunk myself so small,
Set myself up to fall.
Climbed to heights,
Cloaked in my hidden fights,
The scheme was misbegotten,
I forgotten.
To answer your question,
An essay would be most apt,
I’ll route through the archives, sift through dusty drawers,
Plot the coordinates of where I have been and map out my thoughts.

But first I must know: what do you know?
Can you hold the depth, can you pause to reflect?

And in the moment, you hold my gaze,
The silence swelling,it’s  weight thick,
I am but a deer in the headlights,
Startled, still and blank,

So in answer to your question,
I’m fine.
May 6 · 99
The key
In those words, they handed me a key—
to armour I wore unknowingly.
A mask that locked me in from the world,
its weight a comfort, strangely unfurled.

I turned it over in my hand,
traced edges I couldn’t understand.
I saw its shape behind closed eyes,
but stayed where silence felt like disguise—
From those walls I could not rise.

But then—
a whisper flickered through the hush,
not one I knew, not one I’d trust.

To face the world just naked skin,
not knowing what I’d held within,
each emotion crashed like waves too wide
for fragile bones to hold inside.
Each sound, a storm.
Each gaze,
A question I could not reply

I reached for the safety I had known,
but the walls were gone—crumbled stone.
The cracks beneath my feet grew wide,
until the world began to slide.
Alone, exposed, and trembling bare,
even silence stung the air.

But then—
the whisper came again,
not from beyond,
but deep within.

A murmur my body remembered,
from before I had words.
It offered no comfort, no retreat,
only truth—
raw and complete.

And in its truth—
a safety transformed,
not hiding,
but simply being
Wisened by battles I shouldn’t have known,
Yet still a child where dreams are grown.
Old in the weight I carry inside,
Young in the places I’ve yet to find.

Old in sorrow, young in my dreams-
Still reaching through the in-between.
May 2 · 65
Trickster guide
The body shows,
what the mind does not know.
It moves through rooms it cannot name,
drawn by echoes, pulled by flame—
blindfolded, yet leading the way.
May 1 · 63
I am the artist
Old patterns aren’t irrevocably etched—
I am the artist. I can still sketch.

When the weight of the past pulls you near,
It’s easy to follow the paths of fear.
Learning to sit with yourself, day by day,
Isn’t all fun and games, or light-hearted play.
The darkness whispers, urging you to stray—
To abandon yourself and walk away.

When shadows press in and you’re aching within,
Feeling like you’re paying for an eternal sin,
The winds howl,
The heavens growl…
Why would you want to stay here,
Just frozen in fear?

If today feels heavy and your strength runs thin,
Know: this moment will pass—it’s not where you’ve been.
There’s courage in staying, in holding your ground,
Even when the storm makes no comforting sound.

Grant yourself grace.
You won’t always be in this place.
Don’t burn the bridges. Don’t sever the ties—
You’ll need them to cross when the storm subsides.
Today may be hard, but trust in the flow:
Tomorrow will bring a new light to grow.

When the fog is thick, and the skies are gray,
Do not fear. Do not stray.
It won’t look like this forever—
The sun will rise, no matter the weather.

So hang on. Just stay,
To meet another day.
May 1 · 203
Artist
Old patterns aren’t irrevocably etched,
I am the artist, I can still sketch
What room is there to thrive,
when you’re stuck trying to survive?

The years have taken their toll,
left me searching to feel whole.
I’ve lived enough of this life,
grown too familiar with it’s strife.

How do I build a life for me,
when I never got to see
what living could truly be?

Like a child, I stand unsure,
so much left still to explore.
All those versions of me
I never got to be—
untouched, untried, unseen,
alternatives that have never been.

If time were ever kind,
it would let me rewind.

No room to wonder, no time to try—
only the weight of getting by.
Survival took the years away,
left the dreaming for another day.

Wisened by battles I shouldn’t have known,
yet still a child where dreams are grown.
Old in the weight I carry inside,
young in the places I’ve yet to find.

Old in sorrow, young in my dreams—
Still reaching through the in-between.
May 1 · 53
Wish upon a star
I wonder, my gaze fixed to the sky,
Within the vastness —
There surely exists a place I can fly,
Freed from the strain of the tethers that pull me within,
No need to draw a map just to begin.

A place where I don’t have to don my armour,
The child within, not scanning for all that could harm her.
Where I am whole, not fractured or torn,
Free to exist as I was born.

So I make a wish upon a star,
That I do not have to travel far,
To a place that just makes sense,
Where peace no longer feels so tense.

No longer reliant wholly on solitude,
To access the parts that form the multitude.
Where the archives don’t need to be analysed,
Just left in peace, their truth recognised.
No need to strive or prove, just to be,
Fully myself, simply free.

So I make a wish upon that star,
That I do not have to travel far,
To reach a place I can simply be,
A place where I am truly free.
May 1 · 60
Dying embers
Is it okay just to be,
here —
where you can see?

I promise
I am worth the space,
if you can keep up
with my pace.

I’ll override,
I’ll push through —
not who I am,
just what I do.

I’ll work harder,
run faster,
think sharper —
to earn a place
in your view.

The work will be my show.
I’ll be safe,
where you’ll never know —
hiding,
lost in action,
praying you don’t catch the distraction.

I’ve paid the price,
try as I might —
lost pieces of myself
in the fight.

Each success carves a deeper cost:
a little more of who I am,
lost.

Just keep the door open
a crack —
I swear
I’ll make up for all I lack.

I promise I can be it all,
right up until I fall.

I’ll work harder,
run faster,
think sharper —

I’ll be the fire that burns bright,
until I’m nothing —
dying embers
in the night.

— The End —