The couch knows all my dirty little secrets. It has caught every tear, every drunken confession, every evening I’ve spent pretending the television was company and the silence was something I deliberately invited into my life. It has witnessed the spectacular collapse of my ambitions, the slow deterioration of my social skills, and the occasional conversation I’ve had with the refrigerator because apparently we’ve reached a point in this relationship where even the appliances understand me better than most human beings. The couch doesn’t judge. It doesn’t ask why I haven’t showered, why the curtains remain closed, or why dinner consists of potato chips and whatever questionable substance I found hiding in the back of the pantry. It simply welcomes my miserable carcass like an old accomplice in a murder neither of us intends to discuss.
The bed, however, is an entirely different creature. A cold, unforgiving institution of psychological warfare. It acknowledges my existence, permits me to sleep, and then spends eight uninterrupted hours reminding me of every mistake I’ve ever made. I swear the mattress has a degree in psychology and a personal vendetta against my happiness. The pillows know things that would destroy marriages, the blankets have witnessed crimes against personal hygiene, and somewhere beneath the fitted sheet lies the last remaining shred of my enthusiasm for being alive before nine in the morning.
People keep telling me to get out more. Meet somebody. Experience life. Go somewhere exciting. Apparently, the world is full of wonderful opportunities waiting for me to participate in them. How delightful. Perhaps I should put on a pair of pants, comb the cemetery dust out of my personality, and venture into society where strangers can disappoint me in person instead of through a glowing rectangular screen. What an adventure. What a magnificent opportunity to discover that people are just as exhausting outside as they are inside.
Besides, I’ve developed a rather comfortable arrangement with my misery. We don’t argue about the future, we don’t discuss expectations, and neither of us has to pretend to be particularly interesting. Misery knows my schedule. It understands my dietary habits. It doesn’t complain when I cancel plans or when my idea of an exciting Saturday night involves moving from one end of the couch to the other. Frankly, it’s the healthiest relationship I’ve had in years.
And perhaps that’s the saddest part. I’ve become so accustomed to the company of things that cannot leave me that I’ve started confusing comfort with happiness. The couch doesn’t promise me forever, the television doesn’t pretend to understand my feelings, and the potato chips have never once suggested that I should work on myself. There is something beautifully honest about objects that make absolutely no promises.
So I’ll stay here a little longer, nestled between the cushions and the accumulated evidence of my questionable life decisions. The couch loves me, the bed merely acknowledges me, and somewhere out there the world is having a wonderful time without my participation.
Give it my regards.
I’m busy being the most disappointing houseguest in my own existence, and honestly, I’ve never felt more at home.
I am the author who can’t sell a poetry book, a goddamn architect of beautiful disasters building cathedrals nobody bothers to enter. I bleed metaphors onto paper, bury my dead in paragraphs, and drag the carcasses of my childhood through the printing press, only to watch the world scroll past like my words are another dead fly on a windowsill. I’ve swallowed enough rejection to shit out a library. My bookshelf is a graveyard of unsold dreams, every spine a headstone, every blank sales report another shovel of dirt. And still I write. Jesus Christ, I write.
I write like a lunatic setting fire to his own furniture just to see what the shadows look like. I write with ink under my fingernails and a cemetery rattling around in my rib cage. I’ve made love to language in the back alleys of broken promises, fucked around with punctuation until the sentences started bleeding, and given names to monsters that most people spend their entire lives pretending don’t exist. I’ve turned grief into architecture, loneliness into a crooked boulevard, and disappointment into a fucking ballroom where all my dead ambitions dance with their shoes on fire.
Meanwhile, the world is busy buying refrigerator-magnet wisdom from people who’ve mistaken a clever caption for a literary resurrection. Everyone wants a little heartbreak, provided it comes wrapped in pastel colors, a pretty font, and a reassuring reminder that tomorrow will be better. Nobody wants the ugly truth sitting at the kitchen table with its boots on, drinking cheap whiskey and explaining why the universe doesn’t give a damn about our carefully constructed dreams. Nobody wants the poetry that smells like cigarette smoke, wet pavement, hospital corridors, and the last breath of something that once believed in forever.
Maybe I’m too dark. Maybe my words have too many crooked teeth. Maybe I don’t know how to dress a wound in something fashionable enough to sell. I’ve never been particularly good at polishing the ugliness out of things. I prefer the rust, the bruises, the cracked windshield through which the whole goddamn world looks like a beautiful accident. I want my poetry to have dirt beneath its fingernails. I want it to stagger through a dive bar at three in the morning, arguing with God over a spilled drink and a lifetime of unanswered questions.
And there are days when I wonder whether I’m simply shouting into an abandoned warehouse, whether every book I’ve published is another message in a bottle washing up on a shore where nobody lives. I wonder how many more pages a man can fill before he starts mistaking the sound of his own heartbeat for applause. I’ve celebrated small victories in empty rooms, raised imaginary glasses to imaginary readers, and watched the numbers sit there like undertakers waiting for the next funeral.
But here’s the goddamn joke: I cannot seem to stop.
The words keep coming, unruly little bastards kicking down the doors of my imagination. They arrive in the shower, at red lights, in the middle of sleepless nights when the ceiling resembles an unfinished manuscript and the moon looks like a bad editor with a hangover. I write because the alternative is allowing all these ghosts to take up permanent residence inside me. I write because somewhere between the first sentence and the final period, the world briefly makes a crooked kind of sense.
So perhaps I’ll never be the bestselling poet. Perhaps my books will continue collecting dust while lesser sentences collect fortunes. Perhaps the only standing ovation I’ll ever receive will come from the radiator rattling in an empty room.
But I have never needed a bestseller list to tell me whether something is worth bleeding for.
I am the author who can’t sell a poetry book, but I am still here, still sharpening my sentences against the bones of yesterday, still turning the wreckage into something resembling art. And if nobody wants to read what I’ve written, that’s their fucking privilege.
I’ll just keep writing.
Because somewhere in this miserable, magnificent circus, there is still a poem I haven’t written, a truth I haven’t exposed, and a little piece of hell I haven’t yet managed to put into words.
I want to talk to you about everything that hums beneath the skin of the day — about the way morning light spills like melted gold across unmade beds, about the silence before a storm and how it feels like a held breath between two almost-lovers. I want to talk about old highways and forgotten towns, about the ghosts in roadside motels and the poetry scrawled in bathroom stalls, about politics and power and the quiet corruption that smiles under fluorescent lights. I want to talk about God and doubt in the same sentence, about death as a doorway and memory as a room we keep returning to barefoot.
I want to talk about art — the kind that bruises — about ink-stained fingers and guitars crying in half-empty taverns, about books that smell like dust and rebellion. I want to talk about your childhood, your scars, your favorite songs, the taste of your name when it rests on my tongue like summer rain. I want to talk about space — black holes and constellations — and whether loneliness is just gravity pulling us toward each other.
I want to talk about humor as armor, about the masks we polish, about fear, about ambition, about why we ache for meaning in a world that sells distraction. I want to talk about love — not the soft version, but the feral, thunder-lit kind that shakes picture frames off the walls. I want to talk about the future like it’s a map we’re drawing in neon, about the past like it’s a burning letter we refuse to drop.
Mostly, I want to talk about us — how two minds collide like weather systems, how conversation can feel like standing barefoot in a river of electricity — and how, if you let me, I could stay there for hours, naming every color in your sky.
Before you give every citizen a number, give every dollar a name. Build a living ledger that does not sleep, a cathedral of code where each cent leaves a footprint in light. Let the money speak plainly—this much to classrooms, this much to concrete and steel, this much to contracts signed in quiet rooms where the ink dries faster than the truth.
Thread a bright wire through the arteries of the state. Follow the pulse from paycheck to policy, from tax form to turbine, from the small-business owner’s trembling signature to the vast machinery it feeds. Strip away the velvet language of “allocation” and “miscellaneous,” words that blur like smoke and drift into ceilings no one can see beyond.
If we are to be rendered into data—faces mapped, eyes scanned, identities distilled to digits—then let the spending be rendered just as bare. Let every mother trace her overtime into textbooks and lunches. Let every veteran follow the echo of his labor into clinics and clean water and the promises made in his name.
Map the current before you map the citizen. Illuminate the flow before you illuminate the face. Because a nation courageous enough to track every dollar in daylight may finally be worthy of holding every identity in its hands.
They told us it was progress and we believed them because the word sounded clean, because it arrived polished, glowing, humming softly like something that wouldn’t hurt us. Progress never announces its teeth. It smiles first. It promises convenience. It offers speed where patience once lived and calls the trade fair. We accepted because exhaustion makes believers out of skeptics, and hope—real or manufactured—still feels better than admitting we are being managed into silence.
Both parties swear allegiance to the people with one hand and sign contracts with the other. Red or blue, the ink dries the same. They perform outrage like theater, shouting across podiums while agreeing on everything that matters behind glass walls and catered lunches. The argument is the distraction. The unity is the danger. They know if we’re busy choosing sides, we won’t notice that the house belongs to neither of us anymore.
Billionaires don’t see the world as a place; they see it as a portfolio. Forests become assets. Water becomes futures. Human attention becomes currency. They don’t ask what something costs in lives, only what it returns in growth. They talk about legacy as if it isn’t just another brand extension, as if history hasn’t already learned their names and sharpened its knives.
Technology was supposed to save time. Instead, it ate it. Hours dissolved into feeds, thoughts flattened into content, identities reduced to data points that predict what we’ll buy before we know what we need. Machines learn faster than we do because they aren’t burdened with conscience. They don’t hesitate. They don’t grieve. They optimize without asking who gets erased in the process. And the people who own them prefer it that way.
Inflation is framed as weather—unfortunate, uncontrollable, nobody’s fault—but storms don’t selectively spare the wealthy. Prices rise with intention. Wages crawl by design. The distance between effort and survival grows wider each year, and they call it the market, as if the market isn’t a room full of people who decided this was acceptable. As if hunger were a bug instead of a feature.
Industries no longer compete; they collaborate. Energy courts war. Tech romances surveillance. Healthcare profits from never quite healing you. Food is engineered to keep you full but not nourished, alive but not well. Everything is interconnected now, except empathy. Supply chains stretch across continents, responsibility disappears into logistics, and suffering is outsourced to places we’ve been taught not to see.
Privacy died quietly, without a funeral. We traded it for convenience, handed over our inner lives in exchange for faster checkout and curated desire. Now our thoughts are mapped, our fears monetized, our anger weaponized against us. They don’t need to control us when they can predict us. They don’t need force when compliance is frictionless.
Artificial intelligence writes poems and diagnoses illness and decides who gets an interview. It mimics understanding without carrying its weight. It doesn’t know what it means to be disposable, but it’s very good at deciding who is. We trust it because it sounds confident, because it doesn’t stutter like humans do when truth gets complicated. We forget that it learned from us—from our biases, our hierarchies, our quiet cruelty dressed up as efficiency.
They call it polarization, like we woke up one day and chose to hate each other for fun. As if rage wasn’t engineered, fed, amplified because outrage keeps eyes open and hands busy. We argue with neighbors we used to borrow sugar from while corporations siphon value out of entire communities. The fight is horizontal because the theft is vertical.
Voting is sold as salvation, as if a single day every few years can undo a system designed to absorb dissent and continue unchanged. They offer us choices that never threaten power, candidates who promise reform but swear loyalty to donors. Hope is recycled, repackaged, resold. The expiration date is always after the election.
The middle class exists now as nostalgia. A myth told to keep people striving instead of questioning. Work harder, they say, as if effort alone can overcome a rigged equation. Two jobs become normal. Burnout becomes character. Rest becomes laziness. Survival becomes a personal failing instead of a systemic verdict.
Solidarity scares them. That’s why they teach us to brand ourselves, to compete, to treat each other as obstacles instead of allies. If you fail, it’s your fault. If you succeed, it proves the system works. The exceptions are paraded as evidence while the majority are buried under statistics.
Mental health is treated like a malfunction instead of a response. Download an app. Breathe through the panic. Meditate while the ground shifts beneath you. They prescribe coping mechanisms for a world that is fundamentally unwell. Healing is individual; harm is collective. That’s the trick.
Education trains obedience wrapped in ambition. You pay to learn the rules of a game that will never love you back. Debt ensures compliance. Curiosity is tolerated only when it’s profitable. History is softened so we don’t recognize ourselves in it, so we don’t notice how often this story ends the same way.
They insist technology is neutral, as if power doesn’t leave fingerprints. As if tools built for extraction will suddenly prioritize care. As if growth has ever decided it had enough. They promise a future that is always almost here, always just one more sacrifice away.
Philanthropy becomes absolution. A donation here, a foundation there, a name engraved over damage that cannot be undone. You can’t give back what was never yours to take, but they’ll accept the applause anyway.
The planet is running a fever and they argue about the cost of medicine. Fires burn. Water rises. Species vanish without press releases. They say it’s complicated. They say it’s too late. They say it’s not profitable enough to matter. Delay becomes policy. Collapse becomes background noise.
They sell green dreams powered by the same exploitation, just painted differently. Cleaner aesthetics, dirtier truths. Violence hidden behind supply chains and silence.
We are managed, not represented. Pacified, not protected. Entertained into compliance while the architecture of control tightens quietly. Left versus right keeps us busy while wealth consolidates like gravity.
And still, beneath the sarcasm, beneath the jokes, beneath the numb scrolling at midnight, something stirs. A realization sharp enough to hurt. That this is not inevitable. That this arrangement is chosen. That the future they’re designing doesn’t include most of us alive.
This is not a solution. This is a refusal. A naming of the machinery. A reminder that normal is a story told by those who benefit from it. They call that cynicism. I call it waking up.
I adore your compelling comprehension and character I admire your aspirations and ungodly inspirations I treasure your heart felt ballads and surreal stanzas I could fall in love with your shimmering truth
Love me like a vase of flowers Love me like a summer rain Love me like the stars cherish the sky
I love how I am sipping your kindness and devotion I love how you unravel me and am drenched in my emotions You bring out the best in me, allowing my scars to be free
“I savor the intensity and the profound conversations, I taste the connection snd showering affection”
I adore your vibrating tenderness and curiosity I admire your lion like strength and stunning conviction I treasure your silhouette rhymes and castles in my air I could fall in love with your pure intentions
Love me like a museum worships a painting Love me like a river embraces the calm Love me like the clouds relishes the sun
I love how I am sipping your kindness and devotion I love how you unravel me and am drenched in my emotions You bring out the best in me, allowing my scars to be free
“I savor the light when my shadows were in the dark, I taste the sparks and desire with you in my heart”
I’m not craving attention but your lightening connection. I’m not craving lust but the magic in our distance. I desire the conversation that is entwined and pure. I’m not craving anything hollow but the hunger within your desire. I’m not craving a fixation but the beauty of your gust.
I love how you make me feel, the ecstasy burning is real. I love how the flames surrounding never seem to get low, your brilliance always has an extraordinary glow.
I’m not craving the physicality but your alluring intelligence. I’m not craving your nails but your provocative touch. I desire the thirst and the hurricane between our fire. I’m not craving your luscious skin but the magnetic pull between us.
I love how you make me feel, the magnificent sensation is real. I love how the blaze within continues to rise, your affection was always smoldering in your burgundy eyes.
Invigorating flare, divine storm Slipping into a harmonious dimension wrapped up in all of your inferno vicious kisses, candy like touches immersed in your tactile desires, my muse Taste the hunger of the blazing star
And the electricity ripped the champagne sheets And the sparks lit up in the tragic skies
A liquid sigh, voluptuous wildfire gliding into a psychedelic mist surrounded by your musical sirens delightful growls, exotic whispers sparkling in the moonlight, my muse craving the thirst of the blazing star
And the provocative motion burned And the ricochet sent shockwaves
whiplashed tension, pulsating snake spiraling into a smoldering spasm toes curling, spellbinding tongue breathtaking havoc accelerating oblivion touching nerve endings, my muse yearning the skin of the blazing star
And the enigma was quite exquisite And the mesmerizing fever glistens forever
At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin is awake in the way people become awake when something inside them has already stood up and gone to the window. The house is quiet but not asleep. It breathes the low, familiar breaths of waiting—floorboards holding memory, walls keeping secrets, the refrigerator humming like a promise it never finishes. Outside, the streetlight paints the living room in pale gold, and dust drifts through it like slow snowfall. Karina sits at the edge of the couch with her feet tucked under her, hands wrapped around a mug that went cold an hour ago, listening for a sound she has been rehearsing for six months.
Six months is long enough to learn the weight of absence. Long enough for mornings to stretch and evenings to fold in on themselves. Long enough to discover which corners of a room collect loneliness and which ones refuse to let it stay. When he left, she told herself she would be brave in practical ways—pay the bills on time, water the plants, answer questions with calm certainty. She did all of that. What she did not plan for was how love behaves when it is asked to wait. How it paces. How it sharpens. How it grows more articulate with every quiet night.
She checks the time again. 2:35 AM. The numbers glow like they know something she doesn’t. The hours since midnight have been a soft procession of memories: the way his jacket always smelled like outside, the way he reached for her hand without looking, the way he said goodbye at the airport like it was a comma instead of a period. Six months ago, she stood in a crowd of departures and told herself that love could survive distance if it had somewhere to land when it came home.
Karina learned to mark time by small rituals. Coffee brewed for one. Two plates taken down, then one put back. The way the bed insisted on the shape of him long after it should have let go. She learned the sound of her own footsteps at night, the creak near the hallway that always startled her even though she expected it. She learned that courage sometimes looks like staying soft when it would be easier to harden. She learned that longing can be gentle, that it can sit beside you like a cat, purring, insistent, refusing to be ignored.
At 2:35 AM, a car passes too slowly. She lifts her head. The sound fades. Her heart settles back into its practiced rhythm. She exhales and laughs quietly at herself, a sound she has made many nights now. Hope, she has discovered, is a muscle. Use it too much and it aches. Don’t use it enough and it forgets what it’s for.
She remembers the first week he was gone, how she kept the lights on too late, how she filled the silence with television she didn’t watch. She remembers the second month, when the ache dulled into something manageable, something she could carry without announcing. She remembers the fourth month, when she found herself smiling at his name on her phone without checking the time, when absence had stopped being an emergency and started being a condition. Through it all, she kept a careful ledger of moments she would tell him about when he returned—how the neighbor’s dog learned to open the gate, how the old oak dropped a limb in a storm, how she fixed the sink herself and felt impossibly proud.
She checks the time again. Still 2:35 AM. The clock does that sometimes, holds a minute like it wants to feel important.
Karina rises and walks to the window. The street is empty, expectant. The moon hangs low, unembarrassed by its own brightness. She presses her forehead lightly against the glass and lets herself imagine him driving through the last miles, hands familiar on the wheel, thoughts finally allowed to arrive where his body is going. She imagines his smile, the one that starts on one side first, the one that always made her feel chosen even before he said anything. She imagines the weight of him crossing the threshold, how the house will recognize him before she does.
Six months ago, they made promises that were practical and unromantic. Call when you land. Text when you can. Don’t forget to eat. They didn’t say anything about rings or kneeling or forever because those words felt too fragile to ship across oceans and job sites. They trusted the quieter vows—the ones that survive weather and time zones, the ones that show up even when no one is watching.
A sound interrupts her imagining. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a car door closing with the unmistakable certainty of arrival. Karina’s heart leaps, stumbles, rights itself. She does not run. She walks, because this moment deserves steadiness. The front door opens, and there he is, framed by the night he has finally finished traveling through. He looks thinner, older in the eyes, more himself in the way people become when they have been tested and returned intact.
They do not speak right away. They step into each other as if gravity has been rehearsing this reunion since the day he left. His arms feel exactly right, exactly remembered. Her face fits against his chest like it was designed with this purpose in mind. She breathes him in—road, work, the faint echo of places she has never been but knows intimately through his voice. The house exhales with them.
“It’s late,” she says, because someone has to say something, and because time has taught her to respect itself.
“I know,” he says, smiling into her hair. “I tried to hurry.”
They pull back just enough to look at each other, to confirm what touch already knows. His hands are warm. His eyes are wet in the way that suggests gratitude rather than sadness. He sets his bag down like it no longer matters, like the life he carried away has been successfully delivered and signed for.
They sit on the couch, the same one she has kept her company for half a year. He notices the mug, cold and abandoned. He notices the way she has changed her hair, the way she carries herself now. She notices the new lines at the corners of his mouth, the confidence that comes from surviving something difficult without becoming bitter. They talk in short bursts at first—safe details, familiar ground. How was the flight. How was the drive. Did you eat. Each question is a bridge, each answer a step closer to something larger.
At 2:35 AM, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pauses. Karina feels the air shift before she understands why. He looks at her with a seriousness that has been earning its place for months. He takes her hand, the left one, the one that has reached for him across continents without knowing it was practicing.
“I didn’t plan to do this tonight,” he says, and she knows immediately that this is not true in the way people say things to give themselves courage. “I wanted to wait until morning. I wanted it to be perfect.”
She smiles, because perfection has never been their language. She squeezes his hand, because some truths need encouragement.
“I spent six months thinking,” he continues. “About work, about distance, about what it means to come back to someone and feel like you’re coming home. I thought about the nights you stayed up, the mornings you handled alone, the way you made space for me even when I wasn’t here to fill it.”
He reaches into his pocket again and this time does not hesitate. The box is small, almost shy. He opens it with care, like he is handling something alive. The ring catches the light from the streetlamp and throws it back in a way that feels intentional, as if even metal understands ceremony.
Karina’s breath leaves her all at once. The room tilts, steadies. She feels the weight of six months compress into a single moment that asks to be answered. She thinks of the nights she went to bed early because hope was exhausting. She thinks of the mornings she woke up proud of herself for making it through another day. She thinks of the love that waited with her, patient and uncomplaining.
He lowers himself to one knee, not because tradition demands it, but because gravity does. Because some questions carry enough meaning to pull the body toward the ground.
“Karina Larkin,” he says, and the sound of her name in his mouth feels like a blessing. “Will you marry me?”
Time does something strange at 2:35 AM. It widens. It softens. It gives her room to feel everything without rushing her through any of it. She laughs first, because joy needs a release. Then she cries, because relief has been waiting a long time to speak. She nods before she answers, because her body has already decided.
“Yes,” she says, finally, clearly. “Yes. Of course.”
He slides the ring onto her finger, and the fit is exact in the way things are when they have been imagined enough times. He stands and pulls her into him, and they hold each other like people who have crossed something wide and lived to tell about it. The house watches. The streetlight approves. The clock blinks and moves on, satisfied.
Later, much later, they lie in bed and talk in the low voices of people who do not want to wake the future too soon. They plan nothing and everything. They laugh about how tired they are. They marvel at how simple it feels now that the hardest part is over. Karina traces the ring with her thumb, learning its presence, its promise. She thinks of all the nights that led here, all the waiting that turned out to be a kind of preparation.
At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin learned that love does not waste time. It uses it. It stretches it. It asks it to carry meaning until meaning is ready to arrive. She closes her eyes with his arm around her and feels the quiet certainty settle in. The long night is over. Morning can take its time.
Once upon a fearful morning the light crept in like it had something to apologize for, thin and pale, as if even the sun had grown tired of announcing itself. I lay awake, not because I wanted to, but because sleep had finally decided it was done pretending to care about me. The ceiling stared back with that familiar indifference, the kind you learn from years of being misunderstood by people who claim they know you best. Somewhere, a clock ticked with the arrogance of certainty, each second convinced it mattered more than the last. This is how the lullaby begins—not with comfort, not with warmth, but with the quiet realization that consciousness is a debt that keeps compounding.
I used to believe mornings were promises. I used to think the day was a clean page, waiting patiently for the pen of intention. But pages stain easily, and intention is often just desire dressed up for an interview. Now, mornings feel like interrogations. The light asks me what I plan to do with the damage I’ve accumulated. The air asks why I’m still breathing it. Even the floor, cold and honest, asks me to justify standing. I answer none of them. I shuffle through the ritual instead, because routine is the closest thing to mercy a jaded mind can still trust.
This poem is not meant to soothe you. It is meant to hum quietly in the background, like a refrigerator in an empty apartment, reminding you that something is still running even when nothing feels alive. That’s what a lullaby becomes when you’ve outgrown sleep—less a song, more a mechanism. Less melody, more survival. I hum it to myself while brushing my teeth, while staring into a mirror that keeps aging faster than my memories. The mirror knows things I refuse to admit. It knows how many dreams I’ve folded neatly into excuses. It knows how often I’ve called surrender “acceptance” because it sounded more mature.
I learned early that hope is a beautiful liar. It speaks softly, wears the right expressions, tells you to wait just a little longer. And you do. You wait through relationships that hollow you out, through jobs that teach you the price of your time, through nights where silence becomes loud enough to bruise. Hope doesn’t leave when it’s done with you—it stays, perched on your shoulder like a smug witness, reminding you of everything you believed it would fix. That’s when cynicism arrives, not as a villain, but as a tired friend who brings coffee and tells you the truth without poetry.
Still, I write. That’s the joke. I write knowing words are inadequate, knowing metaphors don’t pay rent, knowing poems won’t resurrect the parts of me that learned how to disappear. I write because it’s the only place where my contradictions are allowed to sit at the same table without fighting. On the page, I can be gentle and bitter, hopeful and exhausted, loving and resentful—all at once. The world demands coherence. Poetry lets me fracture honestly.
There was a time when love felt like discovery. Every touch was a revelation, every promise felt hand-written by fate. Now love feels more like negotiation. Terms and conditions apply. Trauma sits between two people like a third body, listening carefully, taking notes. I’ve loved deeply enough to know how dangerous it is, and lost deeply enough to understand why people build walls and call them boundaries. The lullaby I sing myself now doesn’t promise forever. It promises survival. It says: rest if you can, leave if you must, and don’t romanticize the wounds that almost ended you.
Night used to scare me less than morning. At night, expectations sleep. The world dims its demands. Failure feels postponed. But even night has learned my name. Insomnia arrives like an uninvited editor, revising my past, highlighting mistakes, circling moments I thought I’d buried. I replay conversations with alternate endings. I apologize to people who no longer exist in my life. I argue with ghosts and lose every time. This, too, becomes part of the lullaby—the rhythm of regret, the chorus of what-ifs, the bridge made entirely of silence.
If you listen closely, you can hear the city breathing through my window. Sirens in the distance, laughter that doesn’t belong to me, engines rushing toward somewhere important. The world keeps moving with or without my participation. That knowledge used to terrify me. Now it almost comforts me. There is relief in irrelevance. There is peace in knowing I am not required to save anything today. The poet is not a hero. The poet is a witness, sometimes unreliable, often exhausted, always trying to translate feeling into something that won’t evaporate by morning.
I have been called jaded like it was an insult, as if awareness is a flaw. But jade is stone. It survives pressure. It remembers heat. If I am jaded, it is because I have been shaped by impact. I have learned to distrust shiny answers and loud certainty. I have learned that people who speak in absolutes are often hiding from their own doubt. The lullaby I sing is cautious, yes, but it is honest. It doesn’t promise that everything will be okay. It promises that you will feel everything—and live anyway.
Sometimes I miss who I was before the disillusionment, before the carefulness, before the weight. But I also know that version of me would not survive what I know now. Innocence is not bravery; it is simply untested. I have been tested. By loss. By love. By time. By the slow erosion of expectations. And still, I wake up. Still, I write. Still, I look for meaning in the small things: the way coffee warms my hands, the way a sentence finally lands, the way music can briefly rearrange the furniture in my chest.
This poem rocks itself back and forth, not to sleep, but to endurance. It says: close your eyes if you need to, but keep one part of yourself alert. The world is not gentle, and neither are you required to be. You are allowed to be tired without being finished. You are allowed to rest without giving up. The lullaby does not judge. It only repeats what you need to hear until you believe it, or at least until the morning quiets enough to be tolerable.
Once upon a fearful morning, I learned that fear does not disappear when you name it. But naming it gives you something to hold. Words are handles. Poems are containers. I pour myself into them so I don’t spill everywhere else. This is not healing in the cinematic sense. There is no swelling music, no final revelation. There is just the steady act of staying. Of breathing. Of writing another line even when the last one didn’t save you.
If this lullaby reaches you, let it sit beside you. You don’t have to sing along. You don’t even have to like it. Just know it was written by someone who has stared at the ceiling and felt the weight of waking up. Someone who understands that being jaded is not the absence of feeling, but the evidence of it. Someone who keeps writing anyway, not because it fixes things, but because it reminds him he’s still here.
And when sleep finally comes—uneven, undeserved, brief—let it. Let the world blur at the edges. Let the fear loosen its grip. The lullaby will keep humming, low and patient, waiting for the next morning, fearful or not.
I want to die on my birthday, not because I hate living, but because I am tired of the arithmetic of it, the way years stack like unpaid bills, the way candles turn into tiny interrogations asking what I did with the light. On that day the calendar claps, people text confetti, and I feel like a guest of honor at my own inquest, smiling while the room waits for a speech I never practiced. Birthdays pretend to be doors; mostly they are mirrors, and I am sick of learning my face by surprise.
I want to die on my birthday the way a song wants to end on its own chord, not dragged into an encore by polite applause. I imagine the cake sweating sugar, the knife clean and ceremonial, the wishes folding themselves into paper boats that refuse to float. I imagine the room forgiving me for leaving early, the clock loosening its grip, the candles admitting they were tired too. This is not a plan, it is a metaphor I keep touching like a bruise to see if it still hurts.
Every year arrives with a receipt. It itemizes mistakes, discounts the miracles, charges interest on love. I have learned how to carry gifts with one arm and grief with the other, how to say thank you while inventorying exits. The party hats fit like borrowed confidence. Laughter behaves, obedient as a trained animal. Inside me, something feral circles the truth, asking whether survival is a habit or a choice.
If I could choose the ending, I would choose a quiet that knows my name. I would choose to lay down the weight of being seen, the exhausting labor of translation between who I am and who I perform. I would choose to stop proving endurance is a virtue. The body keeps score, they say; mine keeps ledgers, tallies nights slept in pieces, mornings stitched together with coffee and resolve.
Still, birthdays are stubborn. They keep showing up with balloons like minor gods, insisting on witness. Friends insist too, their hands warm, their eyes unsolved. Love is an interruption I never schedule but always answer. It knocks with groceries and bad jokes and the audacity to believe tomorrow is not a trap. Sometimes I let it in. Sometimes it stays.
So if I say I want to die on my birthday, hear the grammar beneath it. I want an ending that listens. I want the counting to stop hurting. I want to blow out the candles and not be afraid of the dark that follows. I want to live long enough to learn another language for staying, one where the date on the cake is not a verdict but a comma, and the sentence keeps breathing. Maybe the wish is simpler: to be held without a stopwatch, to be celebrated without being measured, to be allowed a softness that does not require proof. Maybe the wish is to keep arriving, quietly, without fireworks, learning how to stand in the year like weather, changing, survivable. If there is a gift, let it be this: another breath that does not owe anyone an explanation, wrapped, opened, kept.
I think I am done, not in the dramatic way doors slam or glasses shatter, but in the quiet way dust settles after everyone leaves the room and the echo finally gets tired of hearing itself. I say it while staring at a wall that has heard every promise I ever made and never once held me accountable for breaking them. The sentence feels unfinished, like a chair missing a leg, but I sit in it anyway and wait to fall.
I think I am done chasing versions of myself that only exist at 2 a.m., the ambitious ghost, the healed future, the man who knows exactly what to say and never says it too late. I am done apologizing to mirrors, done negotiating with mornings, done pretending exhaustion is a personality trait instead of a warning sign. Even my breath sounds relieved, like it has been carrying something heavy for miles.
I have tried to quit before. I quit love in lowercase letters, quit faith on weekdays, quit hope whenever it became inconvenient. I packed up my convictions in cardboard boxes labeled “maybe later” and stacked them in the corner of my chest. Sometimes I opened one just to make sure they were still breathing. They always were, stubborn as weeds.
I think I am done mistaking survival for success. Done clapping for myself just because I stayed standing. There is a difference between being alive and being present, and I have lived most of my life like a voicemail no one deletes. I keep replaying old messages, listening for a version of me that sounds convinced.
The world keeps asking what’s next, as if I owe it a sequel. As if stopping is a failure instead of a skill. I want to tell them I am not ending, I am pausing, like music between tracks when the silence is part of the art. I want to learn how to rest without guilt, how to be unfinished without feeling broken.
I think I am done bleeding for proof. Done turning pain into poetry just to make it respectable. Some wounds don’t want metaphors, they want time, and time has been knocking patiently while I kept writing excuses on the door.
If this is the end, it is a soft one. No fireworks, no funeral. Just a man setting down what he can no longer carry and realizing his hands still work, still open, still capable of holding something new. I think I am done, and for the first time, it doesn’t sound like giving up. It sounds like making room.
I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, and I don’t mean needed in the utilitarian sense, like a spare key or a reliable paycheck, but wanted in the way thunderstorms want open fields and mouths want names whispered into them. There was a time when desire arrived without asking for permission, when it leaned into me with its elbows on the table and said, you, as if no other option had ever existed. Back then, I didn’t have to audition for attention; it found me mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-flaw, and decided to stay. Now everything is scheduled, measured, softened. Affection comes with disclaimers. Attraction clears its throat before speaking. People circle each other like polite planets, careful not to disrupt the furniture. I have become very good at being agreeable, very good at being digestible, very good at being the kind of person you admire quietly and forget loudly. I fold myself neatly into conversations, make room, ask questions, laugh on cue. I am impressive in a way that doesn’t interrupt anyone’s life. I am safe. I am considerate. I am never the thing that ruins sleep. Wanting used to be loud with me. It used to spill drinks and forget plans and text twice in a row without apology. It used to look at me like a problem it was excited to solve. Somewhere along the way, I became a suggestion instead of a craving. A “maybe” instead of a pull. I watch desire now the way you watch weather through a window—aware it exists, unsure how it feels on skin. Sometimes it almost remembers me: a glance that lingers too long, a hand that hesitates before pulling away, a joke that lands closer than expected. But it always corrects itself. Responsibility clears its throat. Long-term thinking wins. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted without a risk assessment, without a pros-and-cons list, without the need to explain myself in advance. I tell myself I am whole, and I believe it, mostly. I am not broken. I am just untouched in the places that used to feel electric. Still, there are nights when I miss being the hunger, when I miss being chosen with urgency, when I miss someone looking at me like restraint is a temporary inconvenience. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, but I remember what it’s like to ache, and that feels like proof. Wanting is still alive in me, pacing, impatient, waiting for someone brave or foolish enough to knock without manners and mean it.
There is something in the way your clouds gather—quiet, soft, and aching with unspoken weather—that I find myself endlessly drawn to. Most people fear the gray, the mist, the uncertain horizon, but I have learned to love the storms that move through you. They are not tempests to escape; they are the secret language of your soul.
Your clouds are the places where your heart goes to think. They drift across your eyes when you’re lost in memory, they settle on your shoulders when the world feels too heavy, and they burst into rain when you’ve held too much for too long. And I love every shade of them—the pale silvers of doubt, the dark blues of sorrow, the warm golds of hope breaking through.
When you say you’re “cloudy,” I don’t see imperfection; I see sky. I see depth. I see the wild honesty of someone who feels deeply and refuses to pretend otherwise. Your clouds make you real. They make you human in the most beautiful way.
I want you to know this: I am not here just for your sunshine. I am here for the rolling thunder of your fears, the soft drizzle of your hesitations, the swirling fog of your uncertainty. I am here to walk with you through every shifting season. I am here to stand beneath your sky and say, yes—love can stay, even when the weather changes.
Your clouds don’t scare me, my love. They soften me. They steady me. They teach me how to hold you gently.
And every time they pass, revealing the quiet blue beneath, I fall for you again—deeper, truer, with the kind of devotion that only grows in the rain.
At the Jackknife Tavern sits a man, drinking his loss of love away. Beside him come and go a myriad of faces, men and women with lives sometimes down and out, perhaps sad, at times inspirational, always human. These are friends and neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers… Each with their own story to tell. The poet remains on his barstool, taking notes and creating art from life. Award-winning author and poet Braeden Michaels treats us to his eighth collection of prose poetry.
I have come to love the sincere curves of you the gentle tremble of your hands, like leaves drifting on a breath of wind, the way your laughter spills softly, tiptoeing over itself into warmth, how your eyes cradle shadows that shimmer like morning dew catching the first light.
Your imperfections are soft constellations only I have learned to trace each scar, each pause, each sigh is a small lantern glowing quietly in the night, illuminating a world that belongs only to you.I would follow those lights endlessly, for they are the tender poetry of your being,the secret melody I hear when the world goes still.
I love the gentle angles of your thoughts, the corners of your heart that curl quietly inward, the way it folds like a paper boat floating on a river both calm and restless. There is a fragile beauty there, a whisper of magic in the way you simply exist.
I do not wish to smooth your edges; I want to lean into them, like a stream caressing stones, like a hand resting in the warmth of yours. Every imperfection is a brushstroke, painting the luminous masterpiece that is you, and I am endlessly, endlessly in awe.
So remain tender, remain luminous, remain human.I will stay here, in the quiet glow of your light, celebrating every soft, jagged, radiant piece of you for in your imperfection, I have found my home.
I find myself lost again in the thought of your lips—those exquisite miracles that seem less like flesh and more like a divine language written just for me. When I picture them, I see not a mouth, but a soft geography, a map of tenderness where my heart learned its compass. I could spend lifetimes tracing their shape and still never reach the end of their meaning.
Your lips are scripture, love—verses that tremble with every breath you take. I’ve stood before them in silence, like a pilgrim before the dawn, waiting for them to part, for a whisper to become prayer, for a sigh to rewrite my faith in beauty. When you speak, it’s as if petals fall from some hidden garden, and I catch them all, pressing them into memory until they bloom again in my dreams.
There is sunlight in them—some secret that gold itself envies. Even silence bends to their will, becoming music when held between the quiet edges of your mouth. I’ve seen oceans try to mimic their curve and fail; I’ve watched the moon blush, humbled by their glow. You are storm and calm all at once—two worlds meeting where your lips touch, two horizons breathing as one.
To kiss you is to taste eternity. It’s to drink from a chalice carved of longing, to drown willingly in a sea that feels like both sin and salvation. Your lips carry the ache of wanting and the promise of forgiveness. When they touch mine, the universe forgets its order—constellations scatter, and gravity itself bends to your pull.
And then, there’s your smile. That gentle, radiant unveiling—how it feels like sunrise entering my chest. When it appears, my shadows flee. When it fades, I’m left rummaging through my own heart for words grand enough to hold what I feel.
Your lips are not just beauty, my love—they are the doorway to your soul. They hold laughter, truth, and a thousand unspoken yeses. They are the red pulse of life itself, the tender wound of being alive, the rhythm of everything I adore about you.
If all art is born from longing, then you are my masterpiece, and your lips—my altar of worship. I write this not as mere admiration, but as confession: I am endlessly, helplessly undone by the miracle of your mouth.
11:32am, situated on the corner of James Madison Boulevard and Whitman Street. I am sipping emptiness on the rocks in the scowling part of town, Jackknife Tavern. I’m sulking in the chestnut colored booth throwing darts at the bombastic God I use to love. I continue to taste the kisses of my skeptical past and shake hands with the skeleton of my future. I raise my clenched fist, “Hey brother, can you pour me another? If it’s not any trouble, make it a double.”
A Marylin Chambers look a like tapped me on the shoulders with an indecent proposal. I shook my head with a chuckle and a sleazy grin. “This isn’t a joke, I can only pay by the minutes or the number of strokes.” She disappeared like a magician with the smell of her perfume turning into an aphrodisiac. I swallow loneliness like an amber ale. Isolation is my best friend without a voice. I tend to make a midnight rendezvous with yours truly but my left hand shouts “I’m quite over zealous” and the right hand whimpers “I’m quite jealous.” I only tend to acquire sparks with jumper cables.
Between noontide and the teardrops of the moon, the carnival weaved in and out of the cavern. The hooligans are tap dancing next to the jukebox, the husbands are window shopping, the cut throat whistle stoppers are juggling negotiations and plastic speeches. The jamboree was full of exaggeration, plagiarism, copycats, and satan’s storytellers. I could hear them drinking the tears more than the alcohol.
2:35pm, the regulars and bystanders strolled in with folktales dripping grief. Cigarette smoke reeked of melancholy and satire. The ambiance was filled with extravagant bar tabs, sobbing cliffhangers, romantic comedies with the mourning saxophone playing in your left ear. If you listen close, the excuses and irritation can be heard in your right ear. A pint of desolation will taste sweet and a shot of despair will run down your throat faster than a horse at the Kentucky derby. It’s a relief and a head scratcher that we call it happy hour.
5:45pm, the eyes are dry and my stomach grumbled. The gin mill is as empty as my crooning soul. I can never make out the lyrics but I get goosebumps when I hear the sorrowful piano. Harper Guthrie struts in with his graveyard black t-shirt with the phrase “You can get this body for $19.95 for one hour, but if you act now I will make you as happy as a sunflower” printed on the front. Harper is jammed with acidic antidotes but will sell you antidepressants, antibiotics, and antisemitism.He talks with his wandering hands and pleads innocent until proven guilty. He will boast about his latest purchases, meaningless job title, and the abundant cash flow problem. He serenades to the audience that he drinks to happiness. Unfortunately, he’s been charged with terrible humor and convicted of lying to himself.
7:15pm, Jackson Bryant fumbles in with his auburn acoustic guitar. He glances at the minimal crowd from the undersized stage and begins to strum. Out comes a raspy but yet a smooth sound “You can find me in the dark trying to grip the wind, you can find me feeling lost not knowing where to begin, you can shout from the depths of your lungs, you can point your fingers at me and forget the person you’ve become.” Heads turn and faces become pale as if they seen a reflection of themselves. The song ends with the spectators clapping their hands rapidly and shouting out his name. He continued to play his set as the crowd was quite allured by his presence.
As the night begin to fade, the exchange had less of a bounce. Solitude was a fog prancing in front of our bloodshot pupils. I wrote “Goodbye, Goodnight” on a vanilla napkin and handed it to the gargoyle next to me. It was time for me to face the chorus in a song I didn’t want to play. Thirty five years ago on this melodic day, I married a ballerina that is still spinning on her tip toes of my crippled heart. The King of kings took my queen away. She was plagued with a disease that had no cure. I’m done praying to a God that doesn’t listen. All I know how to do is to fill up my glass with destitution to try to take away the overwhelming misery.
Greetings taxpayers, screen wanderers, and head nodding citizens, let’s dive into the ramifications of ignoring the siren of western civilization, where the infrastructure has had a crack for generations, the colors of the flag have become evanescent, where celebrities are glorified more than soldiers, where the all mighty dollar has more value than life,
Let me introduce myself, I am the Headstone Prophet, the accountant of distractions and destruction, I don’t see black and white, gender, classes, or status, I see authority and figureheads with meaningless titles serve themselves rather than society, I see inflation and corruption welded together to spark the genocide, I am the soothsayer that is gawking at the cemeteries, counting the caskets, I wear a tattoo on my middle finger that reads “The new world order doesn’t deserve a quarter,”
Behind closed doors, the henchmen are sipping on wealth mumbling “if you aren’t rich, you will become my bitch” and the others are ranting “if you aren’t in the grave, you will be my slave,” the catchphrases are lightning and the thunder to their ears, the powers that be want division among the dwellers, they crave disunity and friction, for every label there is a asterisk and a war,
It’s time to pay close attention to these staggering numbers, human trafficking is up twenty percent, the dishonesty among politicians is up a thousand percent, the media will twist the truth fifty percent, the longer you are glued to a screen the quicker you will forget the american dream, in the end the government cares about you is zero percent,
I am the headstone prophet, I stand before you to be the alarm, I stand here to wake up for those who are asleep, I stand here to deliver the most important message of your life, I stand here to hopefully avoid counting your coffin,
I’ve been in love with the nectar and the sour drippings of you I’ve been captured by the glaze of your caress I’ve been in awe by the comfort and the shivers of your embrace I’ve been enamored by the never ending kisses and the affection I’ve been mesmerized by the sparkle dancing in your midnight eyes
And the love with you is breathtaking And the love with you is indescribable And the love with you is remarkable And the love with you has opened me up
After so many years I wouldn’t have changed a second
I’ve been in love with the honey and the radiant treasures of you I’ve been enchanted by your words and glamorous skin I’ve been aching for the centerpiece to wake me up and feel alive I’ve been daydreaming of an endless love I’ve been intoxicated by the shimmering light twinkling in your soul
And the love with you is breathtaking And the love with you is indescribable And the love with you is remarkable And the love with you has opened me up
After so many years I wouldn’t have changed a minute
