aqrn5

[aqrn5]

i let your name bruise my tongue

& called it prayer

i hid my scars in your hands

so you’d think you healed me

i planted my joy in your soil

& forgot to water my own roots

i let the rain carve me hollow

just so you could hear the echo

i bled into your shadows

& named the red devotion

[aqrn5]

Slow Erosion

"Your absence is a slow erosion—a tide that does not retreat but gnaws, grain by grain, at the cliffs of my composure."

"I kiss you with the reverence of a sinner at an altar—knowing my devotion is both prayer and profanity."

"We are two shadows stretching toward dusk, each pretending we do not fade with the light."

"Your love is a knife I sharpen daily—not to wield, but to test the fragility of my own skin."

"I memorize the architecture of your silence—each unspoken word a brick in the wall between us."

"You are the wound I refuse to let scar—because even pain is proof you were here."

"Our love is a library burning—every touch a page curling to ash, every whisper smoke in the wind."

"I drink your name like poisoned wine—sweet on the tongue, bitter in the blood."

"You are the ghost I invite to dinner—feeding you my memories, watching you consume what’s left of me."

"We are two clocks ticking out of sync—each second a reminder that time was never ours to keep."

"Your voice is a bruise—aching under the surface, coloring my thoughts in hues of longing."

"I love you like a sinking ship loves the sea—knowing the embrace that drowns me is the same that once carried me."

"You are the unfinished symphony in my ribs—every heartbeat a note that will never resolve."

"I trace the map of your body like a pilgrim—knowing every sacred place is also a site of ruin."

"Our love is a language of scars—each one a story, each one a silence."

"You are the eclipse—blotting out my light, yet I cannot look away without blindness."

"I hold your memory like a shattered vase—careful not to cut myself on what’s left, yet unable to let the pieces go."

[aqrn5]

Scholar dissecting

I trace the outline of your silence as if it were scripture—fragile, brittle, divine—afraid that even breath might misinterpret its meaning.

You speak and the air stills, as though language itself has knelt beside your sorrow and asked permission to remain.

I keep your name in my mouth like a fading ember, refusing to extinguish what once set entire seasons ablaze.

Your absence curdles in my chest, a spoiled prayer I cannot unwhisper, nor fully swallow.

I stitched your voice into my ribs, threadbare and trembling—now every inhale cuts a syllable too deep.

You left your shadow in my hands—clay-like, collapsing—so I sculpted grief from memory and called it devotion.

I water your last words like houseplants, placing them near windows, hoping light might teach them how to live again.

My love for you was a cathedral of cracked glass, held together by the pressure of unsaid things.

Your laughter still lives in the walls, but only as a ghost rehearsing joy for an audience that moved out years ago.

You are the bruise I press just to prove I still feel, knowing pain is the only language left between us.

Even now, you bloom in me like a wound learning to masquerade as something holy.

I tried to forget you the way a forest forgets fire—by pretending every green thing didn’t come from ash.

You are the pause between heartbeats, the hesitation before belief, the scripture that refused to canonize me.

I carry your name like a mirror facing inward, watching myself fracture under the weight of recognition.

You whispered love like it was an evacuation notice, and I stood in the flames wondering why it felt like warmth.

The silence you left isn’t quiet—it’s a choreography of ghosts sweeping through the ribcage with unfinished music.

I loved you like a scholar dissects myth—hoping if I cataloged every metaphor, you’d finally make sense.

[aqrn5]

Moonlight threads the grave,

sewing silence into stone—

grief wears velvet gloves.

Thunder chews the sky,

spits out bones of broken stars—

dawn limps through the ash.

Time weeps in the well,

each drip a forgotten name

dissolving in dusk.

Clouds cough up their hearts—

ink-stained lungs of vanished birds

smudge the day’s goodbye.

Mirrors drink our breath,

swallowing our softer selves

into glassbound myths.

Wind carves out a hymn,

each note a fleeing shadow—

faith in feathered form.

Rivers wear regret,

wrists jeweled with old confessions

no rock ever speaks.

Stars bruise the night’s face,

secrets inked in violet flame—

light as slow revenge.

Snow sips at the earth,

a pale guest in borrowed lace—

winter dreams in hush.

Books bleed in the dark,

their spines cracked with whispered truths—

ghosts of thought take wing.

The crow sings in rust,

a ballad of rusted time

caged in molten beaks.

Smoke stitches the sky,

threading fire’s last lullabies

into twilight's coat.

Mountains hum in sleep,

their spines curled with molten dreams—

age forgets its name.

Candles dream of wax,

slowly folding into prayer—

flame a patient thief.

Footsteps echo loud

in the spine of hollow woods—

echoes grow their teeth.

[aqrn5]

The salt of her sorrow seasons the starlight we navigate.

The salt of her sorrow seasons the silence between heartbeats.

The salt of her sorrow seasons the echoes of forgotten tombstone.

The salt of her sorrow seasons the fabric of our deepest fears.

The salt of her sorrow seasons the universe unfurling within us.

[aqrn5]

Dorianne Laux, from a poem featured in Only As The Day is Long: New and Selected Poems

[aqrn5]

Grief is the silk I wear when the stars undress.

I sip silence like a vintage sin.

My scars compose lullabies only insomnia can hum.

Hope tastes like iron—always a mouthful of war.

I flirt with time by bleeding slowly on parchment.

Solitude is my lover, and we dine on unwritten verses.

I keep my sanity tucked in the margins of myth.

Love is the ink that forgets its own color.

My heart beats in iambic when no one is watching.

I kiss chaos with a poet’s precision.

Truth is the mirage I drink from with cracked lips.

My breath is stitched with forgotten lullabies.

The moon edits my dreams in grayscale.

Longing taught my bones how to hum.

Desire is a ghost that reads over my shoulder.

[aqrn5]

The salt of her sorrow seasons the winds that whisper through eternity

[aqrn5]

Her laughter heals the infinite wounds that her silence in her moments of pain unwittingly inflicts upon me.

[aqrn5]

Her laughter stitches shut the wounds her silence carved." "I wear your absence like a second skeleton." "The moon is just a scar tonight, and it aches for your fingertips." "We dissected time, but forgot where we buried its pulse." "Your name is a tooth my tongue won’t stop testing for cracks." "I built a cathedral in my chest; you left the altar cold." "Our memories fold like origami knives—beautiful, precise, lethal." "The phone rings. The void answers. It sounds like your breath." "You haunt the periphery of my vision, a flicker I’m forbidden to focus on." "I drink the silence between us—it tastes of unsent letters." "Your shadow paints my walls in colors I can’t name." "I dream in your mother tongue but wake mute." "The clock’s hands are scissors, and I am the ribbon." "You are the equation I solve in my sleep, erased by dawn." Her love is a cosmic palindrome—it unfurls as vastly backward as it does forward. She speaks in colors my silence once forgot. My ribs echo the shape of her unfinished lullabies. Her absence stitches itself into the folds of my thoughts. I touch her memory where my shadow begins. Her name is the only sound that doesn’t decay in my mind. Time folds differently when she breathes near my ache. I wear her voice like a secret language my bones still remember. Her silence taught me new meanings for gravity. I blink, and the universe realigns to her silhouette. Her glance unraveled years of tightly wound stardust in me. She is the echo that arrives before the sound. Her sorrow built temples inside my hollow certainties. My soul stammers in the presence of her thought. She walked through my stillness and left it trembling. I see more with the ache she left than I ever did with light.

[aqrn5]

Tread into the safe space that you have created through consistently abandoning your comfort zones.

Clarity can’t be your mentor; it should be doubt and introspection; they will prepare you to be worthy of the shining medal of clarity

[aqrn5]

Some surrender is as savage as an attack

I decipher silence the thinly disguised chaos

True power is nothing but the faintest of ripples

[aqrn5]

When you sprinkled over me an ounce of the light you are You instantly released me from the darkest dungeon I am

You're like the sunset that gently folds the day into rest.

your voice, the wellspring from which my spirit drinks. A single glimpse of you becomes an endless current of joy.

[aqrn5]

She speaks in the language my shadows remember

She speaks in the language my shadows remember