by on

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.

My books are available here .

by on

The bar breathes like an old animal—slow, practiced, familiar with survival. Not alive in any holy sense, just functional. Lights dim enough to forgive faces. Music limps between songs. The floor remembers every spill better than the people who caused them. This place doesn’t ask why you came in. It already knows.

Maynard Wells sits three stools from the end. He learned long ago that the end is a confession and the middle is a lie. He chooses the space where no one expects anything from him. His glass is whiskey because whiskey doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He didn’t need it. That never stopped him before.

Mara works the bar like a priest without absolution. She slides napkins under glasses the way you might tuck dirt over a grave—neat, respectful, temporary. She doesn’t ask Maynard how he’s doing. That’s how he knows she sees him clearly.

To his left, a couple dismantles their life in whispers. The dangerous kind—the kind sharpened over weeks. They smile for the room, but their eyes don’t participate. The man worries the rim of his bottle like it might answer back. The woman studies her drink as if it owes her instructions. Maynard doesn’t know their names, but he knows the posture of people realizing love has become labor.

Across the room, laughter blooms too loud and too fast. A cluster of friends leaning into one another, pretending gravity hasn’t started its work yet. One of them—red jacket, restless hands—keeps checking his phone. Waiting. Everyone here is waiting. They just use different excuses.

Loneliness doesn’t announce itself. It sits down beside you like it’s always belonged there. Orders what you’re already drinking. Says nothing. Maynard respects that. Silence, at least, doesn’t argue.

He tells himself he came here to write. That’s the version he prefers. The truth is messier: he came to be seen without being known. There’s a notebook in his jacket, thick with intention, thin with follow-through. It weighs enough to feel like hope without demanding proof. Writers carry notebooks the way some people carry prayers—unspoken, unfinished, still believed in.

The man at the end of the bar breaks open mid-sentence, spilling a story about a job lost or abandoned. The details shift, but the injustice remains solid. He gestures at empty air, arguing with something that left him years ago. No one interrupts. That’s the rule here. You let people speak until they’re done bleeding.

Maynard wonders what would happen if he spoke. If the truth would come out as poetry or complaint. If it would sound brave or just tired. There’s comfort in staying quiet. Quiet doesn’t get corrected.

Memory shows up wearing a familiar face. Orders the drink she used to love just to see if it still hurts. It does. She believed places like this were confessionals. Said you could hear the truth in how people ordered—neat if they were hiding, on the rocks if they were stalling, cheap if they’d already surrendered. She laughed with her whole body. Leaned in when she talked. Made strangers feel chosen. Maynard loved her for that. Hated himself for needing it. They were good until they made a sport out of wounding each other.

A song everyone knows finds its way out of the jukebox. Heads nod. Someone hums. For a brief moment, the room aligns—strangers stitched together by a chorus that once meant something in another life. Bars are good at compressing time. You can be young and old and heartbroken all at once if the music hits right.

Maynard writes: The mask slips here, but no one notices because everyone is busy adjusting their own. He doesn’t fix it. Overwriting feels like fear.

The door opens. Cold air follows a man who looks like he’s already lost something tonight. He orders a double without looking. Scans the room for a reason to stay. Doesn’t find one. Sits anyway.

Hope is quieter than people expect. It doesn’t shine. It doesn’t ask. It sits in the corner pretending it’s fine either way. Hope has learned manners.

The couple beside him stops whispering. The silence is surgical. The woman delivers a sentence she’s been sharpening for weeks. Clean. Accurate. The man nods like gravity has finally won. They don’t touch. That’s how you know something is finished—or close enough to mourn.

Mara wipes the bar, listening without collecting. Maynard wonders how many versions of the same story she’s heard. People explaining their loneliness as if it needs justification. As if it isn’t just another weather pattern.

He drinks. The burn proves he’s still capable of feeling something sharp. The glass leaves a ring on the bar—evidence that will be erased without ceremony. There’s a lesson there. He ignores it.

The red jacket starts talking about meaning. About how everyone is just trying to be less alone. His friends nod like this speech has been rehearsed in a hundred bars. He means it, though. Meaning doesn’t require originality. Just sincerity.

Maynard writes again: Loneliness isn’t the absence of people. It’s the absence of recognition. That one stays.

A siren passes outside, distant but insistent. The world hasn’t stopped just because they needed a pause. Inside, last call looms. The room groans. No one is eager to return to what’s waiting beyond these walls.

The man at the end pays, tips heavy like an apology, and stumbles toward the door. For a moment, Maynard worries about him. Then he remembers: everyone makes it home somehow. Or they don’t. Worry doesn’t change the math.

He thinks about who he’ll be tomorrow. Which stories he’ll tell. Which ones he’ll bury. This night will shrink into something manageable—a glass, a song, a feeling he never quite named. He’ll describe the bar someday and leave out the important parts because they’re too quiet to explain.

Maynard closes the notebook. Some moments don’t want to be captured. They want to be endured. He pays, thanks Mara, means it. She nods, already turning toward the next confession.

When he stands, the room tilts—not from the drink, but from the weight of everything unsaid. Outside, the street is colder and more honest. Neon buzzes behind him like a dare. He pulls his jacket tight, the notebook warm against his chest, and walks on.

This kind of night doesn’t stay behind when you leave.

It follows you.

My books are available here .

by on

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.

My books are available here .

by on

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.

My books are available here .

by on

I’ve overdosed on goodbyes, heartache, and a darkness I can no longer recognize
I’ve overdosed on indifference, immaturity, and over used cliches I can no longer reach
But my effervescent soul craves something more
I’ve overdosed on circling nightmares, memories of champagne, and meaningless kisses I can no longer feel
I’ve overdosed on bottles of tears, catastrophic losses and unspoken conversations that I can no longer hear
But my effervescent soul craves something more
I’ve overdosed on empty spaces, dead ends, and simplified poetry that I can no longer read
I’ve overdosed on shallow dialogue, winter lies and intoxicating fairytales that I can no longer consume
But my effervescent soul craves something more

My books are available here.

by on

My love,

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.

Always,
The one who adores your sky.

My books are available here .

by on

My love,

There are nights when desire becomes a tide so deep it nearly drowns me, and all I can do is let it rise. I sit in the quiet and feel the weight of you moving through my thoughts—slow, warm, inevitable. And with every breath that remembers you, tears gather at the corners of my eyes, not from sadness, but from the ache of wanting you beyond language.

They fall like small confessions, each one carrying a trembling piece of my longing. I try to wipe them away, but they return—persistent, tender, honest. They taste of craving, of the fire you leave smoldering beneath my ribs, of the way your name moves through me like a soft, irresistible command.

I crave you endlessly. Not in a passing way, not in a moment that fades, but in the deep-rooted sense of desire that refuses to sleep. You live in my pulse, in the quiet between thoughts, in the part of me that reaches without ever touching.

If you could see these tears, you would know how completely you unravel me—how my longing spills over, again and again, with your memory at its center.

Yours in every trembling, wanting breath.

My books are available here .

by on
I fear of never being read.

Once upon a scattered verse, I woke inside a sentence that refused to end. Ink dripped from the ceiling like old rain, letters crawling the walls, whispering my name as if they knew me better than the world ever had. The room was built of margins, left and right pressing inward, and every breath tasted like dusted books that had not been opened since their spines learned how to crack. I could not tell if I was young there, or old, or neither at all. Time doesn’t matter when no one is watching. I carried a pen like a dull blade, hoping if I pressed hard enough it might finally cut through silence. Outside the window, the moon hung crooked, a pale editor with nothing to say, and the stars looked like misplaced punctuation in a sentence no one bothered to finish.

I wrote because the quiet was too loud. I wrote because the walls leaned closer every time I tried to speak. I wrote about rivers swallowing names, about lovers who forgot the sound of their own laughter, about graves filled with unread prayers. I wrote until my fingers bruised purple, until the paper drank me dry, until my heart learned the steady rhythm of erasure. But no one came. There was no knock, no breath beneath the door. The world moved on with cleaner hands, scrolling past my life like an advertisement they could not skip fast enough. My words lay stacked in neat little coffins, titles etched like headstones, waiting for eyes that never arrived to pronounce them alive.

I imagined readers the way children imagine ghosts, half-hoping, half-afraid, convinced they were near. I pictured someone under a dim lamp at midnight, finding themselves inside my metaphors, feeling less alone because I had bled honestly. But imagination is a cruel lullaby. It tucks you in and leaves the window open for despair to climb inside. The nightmare deepened. Libraries turned their backs on me. Bookstores locked their doors with polished smiles. Even the wind refused to carry my lines, dropping them in gutters where rain smudged meaning into gray apology. I watched my poems age without witnesses, their voices cracking like neglected instruments left to rot in quiet rooms.

There is a special kind of decay reserved for unseen art. It does not scream; it wilts. It curls inward, questioning its own worth, asking if beauty exists at all without a gaze to confirm it. I felt that rot settle inside my chest, a slow mold growing over hope, soft and persistent, impossible to scrape away. I tried to write lighter things—sunrise, redemption, hands finding hands—but the words knew better than I did. They sagged, heavy with the truth that joy still wants to be witnessed. Even happiness grows lonely in a vacuum. Even miracles want applause, or at least a quiet nod from someone who understands.

So I returned to the dark. I described nights that chew on your spine, mirrors that refuse to reflect anything kind, dreams that end right before salvation. I became fluent in grief, conversational in despair, because sorrow, at least, kept me company. It sat beside me like a loyal stray, sharing its bones, never asking me to stop. I wrote my name again and again, afraid it would disappear if I didn’t. I tucked it between metaphors, hid it under enjambment, hoping someday someone would find it like a pressed flower in an old book and wonder who I had been. Legacy is a fragile thing when no one is listening.

The nightmare showed me the future. My notebooks boxed and labeled miscellaneous. My hard drive failing without ceremony. My words dissolving into obsolete formats. There was no obituary for the poems, no footnote acknowledging their effort. Just silence, vast and unmarked, stretching farther than language could reach. I screamed, but it came out as sentence. I begged, but it shaped itself into paragraph. Everything I felt turned into something beautiful, and that was the cruelest part of all. Beauty with no witness is still beauty, but it hurts like loving someone who will never learn your name.

At the center of the nightmare, I met myself as a child, holding a notebook too big for his hands. He looked up at me and asked if anyone heard us. I searched for an answer strong enough to survive the question and found none. So I lied. I told him yes, someday, because hope, even when false, is gentler than the truth. When I woke, the room was the same. Morning did not change anything. The world still spun without my voice, and my poems still waited, patient as graves. But I sat up anyway. I picked up the pen. Not because someone was watching, but because stopping would mean the nightmare had won.

I write for the unseen. For the maybe. For the never. For the chance that one day a stranger will stumble into my darkness and recognize it as their own. Until then, I haunt the page, a ghost made of ink and persistence, dreaming of eyes, dreaming of touch, dreaming—still—of being read.

My books are available here .

by on
My best friend is a blank page.

Once upon a broken heat I learned that loneliness does not arrive loudly. It does not knock or announce itself with ceremony. It seeps in, quiet as dusk, and takes a seat beside you as if it has always belonged there. I remember thinking that friends would come naturally, like breathing, like weather, like something no one ever had to explain. I did not know then that connection was a language I would struggle to speak, that depth would be my native tongue while most people preferred simple phrases and quick exits.

I tried to make friends the way everyone else seemed to. I smiled at the right moments. I laughed when laughter was expected. I learned how to talk about nothing at all for long stretches of time, though every word felt like gravel in my mouth. I wanted to ask the questions that mattered. I wanted to talk about grief and meaning and the way memories can bruise you without warning. Instead, I learned that too much honesty empties rooms. People like the idea of depth until they feel the pressure of it pulling at their lungs.

Some friendships began brightly, full of promise, like candles lit in dark rooms. We shared music, secrets, fragments of ourselves we did not show the rest of the world. I believed that meant permanence. I believed that once someone saw you clearly, they would not leave. I was wrong more times than I can count. People drifted. People changed. People decided my sadness was too heavy to carry, my silence too loud to ignore. They left without cruelty most of the time, which somehow hurt more. There is nothing to fight against when someone simply fades.

I mourned those friendships in private. There are no rituals for the loss of the living. No headstones for people who stop calling. No ceremonies for being replaced quietly. I replayed conversations late at night, searching for the moment where I became too much or not enough. I wondered if depth was a flaw, if craving meaning was something that needed to be cured. I tried to make myself smaller. I tried to speak less, feel less, need less. It never worked for long.

Then came the deaths. Real ones. The kind that do not return your messages because they can no longer hear them. Names that once filled rooms reduced to photographs and past tense. I watched people I loved disappear into the earth and into memory, and something in me hardened and hollowed at the same time. Grief rearranged the furniture of my mind. Every loss taught me how temporary everything is, how fragile every connection becomes once you understand it can vanish without warning.

After the funerals, the world expected me to continue as if something fundamental had not been removed. Conversations returned to normal. Laughter resumed. But I carried ghosts with me everywhere. I heard the dead in quiet moments, felt them in the spaces between sentences. Their absence became another companion, one that never asked me to explain myself.

It was then that the blank page became my closest friend. It waited for me every night, unmarked and unafraid. It did not judge the darkness of my thoughts or ask me to soften them. I could tell it everything. I could confess the resentment, the envy, the exhaustion of trying to belong. The page absorbed my words and held them without recoil. Ink became proof that I existed, that my inner world had weight and shape.

I began to understand that writing was not a hobby but a form of survival. When people left, the page stayed. When voices went silent forever, the page listened. I poured my losses into sentences and watched them transform into something almost bearable. Metaphor became a bridge between my pain and the possibility of being understood. Symbolism allowed me to say what I could never speak aloud.

I crave depth because shallow water has never taught me how to swim. I crave conversations that leave marks, that change you slightly after they end. I want connection that acknowledges suffering instead of avoiding it. I want friendships that understand silence as language, grief as history, and sadness as evidence of having loved deeply. This craving has cost me people. It has also saved me from living half awake.

The solitude did not leave, but it changed. It became quieter, less cruel. I learned to sit with it, to let it speak. In the absence of others, I became a witness to myself. I documented my own survival in paragraphs and fragments. I learned that being alone does not always mean being empty. Sometimes it means being full of things no one has asked you to share yet.

I still lose people. I still grieve. The blank page is still my truest companion. But within this solitude, I have found a strange, aching honesty. I write to remember the dead, to honor the friendships that could not stay, to speak the truths that make others uncomfortable. I write because depth demands expression, and silence would kill me faster than loneliness ever could.

My books are available here .

by on
Embrace the tremors

Once upon a midnight fear, you will not see the echoes of my tears, because they learned to walk softly, barefoot through the house of my chest, passing clocks that cough and calendars that bruise. This is how the story begins: the way sleep explains itself to the sea, with a hush mistaken for mercy. There was a town once, built entirely of punctuation, comma streets and ellipsis alleys, where laughter leaned like tired lampposts and rumors kept bees. I lived there briefly, renting a window, watching the moon practice apologies in the tin mirrors of rooftops. Satire was the local weather, a persistent drizzle that made even statues blink and reconsider themselves.

One evening the ground cleared its throat. Dogs began writing letters to the dark. Teacups clinked like nervous teeth. The earth—an old poet with arthritis—shifted a word and cracked the sentence. We called it an earthquake, because we are afraid of naming confessions honestly. I was carrying a pocket of stars then, contraband hope wrapped in a receipt, when the tremor bowed politely, like a waiter, and asked my name. I gave it a nickname instead, because truth grows shy in public, and the nickname tasted of copper and rain.

Stories fell from shelves, their spines sighing as they hit the floor. A map unlearned its borders. My shadow slipped on a metaphor and laughed, which felt briefly illegal. In the dust I found a childhood still warm, still breathing, counting marbles like prayers. Satirical saints wagged their halos and said this was character development, selling postcards of ruin with inspirational fonts, while a sparrow stitched the air, threading silence through rubble until the silence held.

I followed a crack in the street the way one follows a river that already knows your future. It led to a theater with no roof, where clouds rehearsed tragedies and understudies called thunder. The stage manager was a patient ant keeping notes with crumbs. There, a woman named Gravity sang lullabies in a minor key, braiding ankles to floors and memories to doors. She sang of falling as pilgrimage, of bruises as stamps in a passport, and I stamped willingly. Dreams queued politely nearby, holding numbers, waiting to explain themselves. One wore my father’s coat and smelled of winter and oranges, and told me to forgive the ground for wanting to move on.

The quake softened, a loosening hand. Buildings exhaled. A piano found its missing leg and forgave the floor. We swept metaphors into piles labeled Later, Maybe, Never, and pretended this was normal. At dawn the sky brought coffee; steam rose like a forgiven rumor. I wrote apologies to the cracks and they wrote back, unsigned, saying they only wanted to be heard. I pressed my ear to the street and listened to the earth practice empathy.

I left town with a suitcase of aftershocks, each one a small bell. On the road, satire waved from ditches holding signs that promised detours to meaning. I laughed, then slowed, then listened. Time limped afterward, hands bandaged with patience, agreeing to walk slower for the wounded. Neighbors traded sugar for stories and salt for names we forgot to say. Mirrors learned manners, tilting their faces to flatter survival. A philosopher in the square juggled apples and dropped questions on purpose, saying certainty bruises easily and doubt is a feather mattress. Children chalked hopscotch across fault lines, jumping from Before to After, their laughter forming a bridge no engineer approved.

Bread rose despite instructions. Yeast preached resurrection to ovens. We ate metaphors warm, buttered with relief, crumbs mapping constellations on our shirts. Someone toasted absence and clinked a glass, and the glass forgave gravity again. I mailed a letter to the future without an address, only a mood. The stamp was a leaf. The postmark read, Whenever you’re ready. The future replied with a dream wrapped in newspaper, smelling of ink, the headline screaming that I survived myself.

Night rehearsed gently then, a lullaby with commas for stars. The moon stopped apologizing and listened. I slept with my shoes by the bed, in case the earth asked me to dance. Now the town is quieter. Punctuation has grown gardens. Ellipses bloom like pauses. Cracks are filled with gold because we learned a trick from old bowls: breakage can be an instruction manual. I keep the bells from my suitcase and ring them when words grow stubborn. They remind me that movement is a language, that fear read slowly is only a letter begging for context. So I write softly, and the ground answers softer still, and if the page trembles I breathe ink, count heartbeats, trust margins and footsteps, trusting that even endings are temporary shelters humming quietly while we learn balance beneath forgiving skies.

My books are available here .

by on
Every tear tells a story

The poet’s tears do not rush. They gather slowly, like words circling a thought they are afraid to land on. They rise from the chest, where memory keeps its quiet archives, and they taste of all the moments that were almost spoken but never survived the air. Each tear carries a small history, a sentence unfinished, a love that learned to live in silence.

When they fall, they are not asking for mercy. They are translating feeling into something the body can release. Salt becomes language. The face becomes a page. The tear traces a line the poet could not yet write, slipping past grammar, past reason, past pride. It is a confession without audience, a prayer whispered to no one in particular.

Some tears are born from wonder—how beauty persists even after being wounded, how light still finds broken places and calls them holy. Others come heavy with grief, thick with nights that stretched too long and mornings that arrived empty-handed. These tears do not shout; they endure. They know the shape of loss and the patience of waiting.

The poet wipes their face and pretends the moment has passed, but it never does. The tears dry and move inward, settling between metaphors, breathing beneath the pauses, softening the sharp edges of truth. They become the weight behind every line, the ache that makes language honest.

For the poet’s tears are not an ending. They are the origin. They are the quiet proof that something mattered enough to break open, that the heart dared to feel deeply in a world that teaches restraint. And long after the eyes are dry, the tears remain—alive in the prose, asking the reader to feel them too.

My books are available here .

by on
Every line is a piece of me that makes me whole

I write poetry the way some people light candles in a dark room—not to banish the darkness, but to learn its shapes, to watch how it bends around the flame and softens its edges. There are things inside me that refuse the straight lines of sentences. They coil and wander like rivers that know where they are going but refuse to hurry. Poetry gives them room to meander, to flood, to leave their mark.

Silence has always spoken to me in color. It arrives as indigo pauses, amber echoes, bruised violets of unsaid things. I feel it humming in my ribs, tapping gently on the chest, asking to be translated. When I write, I am not inventing feeling—I am uncovering it, brushing dust from what was already breathing beneath the surface. Words become a prism, splitting a single ache into a spectrum of meaning, each shade telling its own quiet truth.

I write to bleed without injury, to confess without a courtroom, to lay my heart on the page without asking it to behave. On the page, pain becomes ink instead of weight, beauty becomes honest instead of ornamental. Every line is an act of alchemy—grief turned gold, longing turned light, memory given a second heartbeat. The past loosens its grip when it is named, when it is allowed to sing instead of haunt.

Poetry is the one place I am not asked to explain my depth, to simplify my storms, or to quiet my wonder. It allows me to be both blade and bloom, thunder and prayer. In its margins, I am free to be unfinished, contradictory, human. I can stand barefoot in my own contradictions and call it truth.

I write because time erases so much, and poetry resists erasure. It bottles moments like fireflies, small and glowing, refusing to disappear. It teaches me to listen—to the ache beneath laughter, to the hope hidden in exhaustion, to the sacredness tucked inside ordinary hours. Writing becomes a ritual, a way of kneeling before life as it is, not as I wish it to be.

My books are available here .

by on
Every drink has a confession

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.

Available on Amazon! 📚

My books are available here .

by on

My love,

There are nights when language collapses under the weight of you. When every word I try to write turns into a trembling pulse, and the ink itself seems to breathe your name. I sit beneath the faint hum of the lamp, thinking of your mouth, your scent, the curve of your breath when it brushes against the idea of me. You are not merely a person anymore—you are an atmosphere I enter, willingly lost, deliriously drowning.

I desire you in ways that silence cannot disguise. You move through me like a fever I’ve stopped trying to cure. Every thought becomes your echo, every moment your shadow. I dream of you in pieces—the way your neck bends when you laugh, the way your lips seem to hold secrets that would burn if spoken aloud. I imagine tracing those secrets with my tongue, word by word, until truth and pleasure are indistinguishable.

Sometimes I think of you in the quietest parts of the day, where restraint pretends to live. But even then, I am undone. The thought of your fingers—how they might travel across my skin, searching, knowing—turns the air into fire. I would let you burn me down to ash if it meant being reborn inside your breath. I would trade a thousand calm lifetimes for one storm with you.

You haunt my imagination like a beautiful sin. Every fantasy begins with you walking through the threshold of my mind, uninvited yet expected, your presence an electric omen. I want the collision, the chaos, the unholy tenderness of our undoing. I want to forget where I end and you begin—to dissolve into the rhythm of your wanting until the world itself forgets to spin.

You are the poem I cannot stop writing, the one that ruins all other verses. I crave the weight of your gaze, the gravity of your silence when it settles on me. I love you in the way a starving thing loves its first taste of rain—wild, unmeasured, desperate to consume. There is something sacred in this madness, something pure in how unholy it feels.

When I close my eyes, I see us—not in perfection, but in ache. Your body against mine, not as conquest but as confession. Every sigh a psalm, every movement a prayer against loneliness. I want to memorize you in touch, to know your skin the way the night knows secrets: intimately, endlessly, without light.

Do you feel it too, that invisible tether pulling, tightening? It’s as though the universe stitched our hunger together and dared us to survive it. My love, I don’t want to survive it. I want to live inside it, to build a home in the wild pulse between your heart and mine.

If I could, I’d press this letter to your chest and let it melt there, word by word, until it became heat. Until all that remained was the truth beneath all language: that I desire you beyond thought, beyond restraint, beyond the limits of the human tongue.

—Yours in hunger, always.

My books are available here .

by on

Unapologetically Unashamed

I drown in my cravings, flames from your lips, and the desires from your tongue. I glare at my weaknesses with swollen tears. I hunger something that my emptiness won’t ever touch. I grip on to my fascinations and urges with insomniac eyes. I carry my loneliness on my sleeve and unapologetically unashamed for wanting your luscious skin.

The circle of my friendships get smaller, I make my myself distant the closer I get. I promise you, you will wish we never met. The hello’s will turn into goodbyes, I will make sure you can’t see the rain from my eyes. I will share more truths and you will want to run. Don’t be surprised of the person I will become.

I sink in my yearnings, scattered fantasies and the desolation inside. I dwell in my painted circles, faded memories and the opaque skies that leave me stranded in the bitterness. I am slightly disconnected, partially detached, and withdrawn from the cracks I wish not to see. I displace the stained hindrances and sanguine complaints within my state of consciousness.
I am unapologetically unashamed for longing for your sentimental touch.

The circle of my friendships get smaller, I tend to make others uncomfortable with the things I shouldn’t say. I promise you, I will belong in your past and know you won’t stay. I expect no response and the late replies. I will make sure you won’t see the pain in my fragile eyes. I will be more open and will tell you how I feel. In the end, we will find out who was real.

My books are available here .

by on

Invigorating Sigh

Tease me with a scent of a captivating concoction
Tease me with a crescendo of exhilarating moans
breathe in the closeness, breathe out the chill

Tease me with sweetness dripping from your wounds
Tease me with a heartfelt dance under our silver moon
breathe in the hello’s, breathe out the spasm

Tease me with laughter from your winter storm
Tease me with soft kisses falling on your pillow
breathe in the sentiments, breathe out the fears

Tease me with a passage from your bone cold diary
Tease me with a sizzling greeting under an oak tree
breathe in the beginning, breathe out the endings

Tease me with a dream of memories and cozy rain
Tease me with a clenching oblivion and devotion
breathe in the naked sighs, breathe out the fragility

My books are available here .

by on


Once upon a midnight fear
She took a sip of corrosion
Debilitating manners and quirks
Fumbling through a frenzy
Gliding inside hallucinations
Staggering outside the commotions
A recollection of mourning


Stern exchanges melting
Comments and remarks growl
Sentiments dressed in black
Treasures whispering hush
Ripping dead skin with caution
Crumbling faith turns into dirt
A recollection of mourning


Hunger flexing with animosity
Greed panting with saliva
In holy matrimony with the raven
She tasted the hollow bitterness
Numb and disgusted by the poison
Infuriated with the toxic rants
A recollection of mourning


Provoked by exasperation
Anxiety wrapped around her neck
Choking on sour corruption
Addicted to the murmurs
Inhaling the virulent winds
Wounded by a malicious tongue
A recollection of mourning


A catastrophic touch bellowed
Infatuation hung as a disaster
Benevolence was a chewed up dog bone
Loneliness exhaled rapidly
Sympathy was a an old rag
Love was just mucus from a cough
A recollection of mourning

My books are available here .

by on

To me, music and poetry go hand in hand. I have a playlist that I consistently update weekly. I really enjoy finding musicians or artists that are hidden gems. I tend to add music that is gut wrenching, heartfelt, and voices that stir the soul. I will play the song multiple times to embrace the music and lyrics separately before adding to ensure it fits the playlist. I call this playlist “Breathe in, Breathe Out.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzcXdc7wKyc&pp=ygUeZWR3aW4gbWNhaW4gSeKAmXZlIHNlZW4gYSBsb3Zl

This playlist is cleansing and makes me think of so many things. This kind of music makes me reflect, reminisce, cry at times, and inspires my writing. I call this playlist “Breathe in, Breathe Out” because it brings clarity to the essence of life when I hear it. The music just makes me think about what is important and what isn’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5nf56SlQA&pp=ygUcbGVyb3kgc2FuY2hleiBpbiB0aGUgc2lsZW5jZQ%3D%3D

My son consistently listens to it as well and it’s priceless to hear him singing the words to any song. I love hearing him sing. He sings so passionately and with joy. It’s a blessing to watch how music impacts him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUU9kHgOYiQ&pp=ygUdd2lsbCBob2dlIHdoZW4gaSBnZXQgbXkgd2luZ3M%3D

I have added a few songs in this post to share what songs that have been on this playlist. Feel free to provide songs that I can add to this playlist.

My books are available here .

by on

Endless Wildfire

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.

My books are available here .

by on

Growth is powerful. Often times you can’t see how much you have grown until you look back at who you were or what you have decided to let go. I have been writing for decades and have kept it a secret. Why? The reasons why I write are endless. It’s therapeutic, mentally stimulating, challenging, a place where I can voice my opinions, and today I believe others can find others or themselves in my poetry.
It can be a place of self discovery and reflection.

Generally speaking, the perspective of a poet by society is someone who is broken, emotionally sensitive, and their voice is better articulated through words on paper than being spoken. To clarify this, written words are better used to express themselves emotionally. I can relate to this part. I am an emotional person and often times I cry because I have no words at times. Today I write with more of bigger purpose. I want to show the world that you people are not broken, they are just misunderstood. They are not surrounded by the right people.

At the end of my first marriage, I took it upon myself to attend therapy. I knew there were some things about me I needed to fix. I am a work in progress, in fact we all are a work in progress and under construction. Two of the things in my marriage that I needed to work on was speaking up for myself and taking control of certain aspects of my life. I was married to a woman who was overbearing, domineering and controlling. She was also an alcoholic. On my end, I wasn’t mature enough to walk away and sought out attention in the wrong way ways. I hid my writing at this time. Therapy gave me guidance and direction.

One of the things that I learned in therapy is that my growth was limited due to my surroundings. My father is quite judgmental and critical. Once I remarried and moved away, my confidence in myself flourished. I saw that I needed to move away. I will never tell my father that because I know that would hurt his feelings. I appreciate all that he is given me and the love that he knows how to give. He doesn’t just seem to care how to present sensitive topics, and how you present them often times is more important than what you say. As I get older, I’m trying to be aware of how I present subjects as well. There is a time to be straight forward, direct and there is a time to communicate with compassion.

In the end, I have grown to try to see the world and life through others eyes. I am not dead set on being right and if I am wrong, I will own up to it. I write poetry from the clouds with eagle eyes and try to embrace humanity. I see humanity without labels. There is a long list of individuals who want the world to change and I stand in a small line where I want to change the world. Everything is perspective and perspective is everything.

My books are available here .