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nothing new

when eve first bit the crimson fruit all men became both judge and jury. her naked form no longer mute— transformed to sin, to shame, to fury.

centuries pass, the story echoes through witch trials, corsets, burning pyres. women's bodies always echoes of someone else's stark desires.

salem's daughters drowned in water, austen's hunted for their wit. truth's back torn by master's order, wollstonecraft condemned for it.

bodies stolen, claimed, exhibited— baartman forced on stage to stand. dickinson's words posthumously edited, curie's brilliance underhand.

plath reduced to madness only, parks to single moment framed. mothers, daughters, sisters, lonely monuments to what men claimed.

priestess, witch, and saint and whore— the masks they force on shifting face. my chapter written, nothing more, than what's been written into space.

with every theft, we rise anew— defiant as the stars above. my chapter added, nothing more— this ancient pattern, nothing new.

my private exposure is merely the latest chapter in history's endless pattern of men claiming ownership over women's bodies—from eve to salem's witches to my own experience—nothing that hasn't happened countless times before.

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understudy

i learn their lines like second roles, their interests noted, quickly filed. my script contains the proper goals— to seem engaged, amused, beguiled.

they touch my hand, i don't pull back, the choreography requires. but in my mind, i count each lack of sparks that matched our former fires.

"you seem distracted," some observe, the braver ones who sense the gap. i blame late nights, my fraying nerves— not how your ghost sits in my lap.

the calendar fills with practiced scenes, each dinner date a thin disguise. my friends mistake these routine means for healing what still amplifies.

the mirror shows my costume change, a different mask for each new part. understudy—always strange to play the lead with half a heart.

about going through the motions of dating after heartbreak

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kismet

the train derails on tuesday's dawn, i curse the flight i'm bound to miss. you lend your phone, my signal drawn, a stranger's smile, a moment's bliss. three hours stretch to five then more, we share the coffee that you brought. our stories drift from shore to shore, the airport fades, our world is caught. years later in a foreign street, i glimpse you through a bookshop pane. our eyes lock, surprise complete, as if we knew we'd meet again. we walk through parks in autumn gold, your hand in mine, no words required. the story of us slowly told in glances shared and breaths inspired. through cities strange and weathered storms, our paths converge without delay. what seems like chance in all its forms reveals itself as kismet's play.

tells the story of two strangers whose paths repeatedly cross throughout their lives— beginning with a chance encounter during a train delay.

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meet and burn

through dark nights and stormy skies, a star begins to glow. what once seemed lost in blackened heights— now shines with steady flow.

like dawn that breaks the endless night, his light dispels my fear. the star i thought had lost its light burns brighter, drawing near.

a constellation forms anew connecting distant parts. each point of light now shines more true, no longer worlds apart.

the cosmos once loomed vast and wide, too complex to discern. now orbits align as heavens guide two stars that meet and burn.

two distant stars navigate the vast darkness until they finally align, transforming isolation into an intense, luminous connection. :-)

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Mary Vincent

asphalt arteries stretched toward horizon's vein, her raised thumb—semaphore to passing gods, she sought in motion what was lost in pain, blind to how predators collapse all odds.

in canyon depths with earth against her spine, her body claimed as territory, then abandoned like some temple he'd profaned, this brutal language known too well by men.

"survive," her mind commanded as he swung. "pretend," it whispered, "play at being dead." she felt her consciousness become unstrung as blood pooled dark beneath her severed head.

he left her there, a trophy of his rage, believing death would claim what he had marked. but something primal refused to be caged— consciousness guttering like a severed arc.

each inhalation—war against collapse, each movement—revolution against pain. her consciousness constructed from synapse a voice that carved this mantra through her brain:

ravines and ditches angled toward oblivion, conspirators with night against her form. yet still she carved through space—a meridian of blood and will—existence as reform.

the gallery of memory still breathes, each phantom limb still reaching for the trust that violence systematically thieves, when men view women's bodies as their just.

this isn't triumph—merely testament to violence passed from father down to son, the casual cruelty, the malcontent, the knife. the hatchet. and the damage done.

and even death row cannot resurrect the lives destroyed by hatred's steady hand. no punishment can ever redirect the path of violence cutting through this land.

this is an elegy that traces the true story of Mary Vincent’s journey from domestic displacement to horrific violence.

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the watchmaker's daughter

in rows of clocks, she'd sit and stare at silent hands her father fixed— each broken face a quiet prayer, each gear and spring somehow transfixed.

"why mend what time will break again?" she'd ask beneath the ticking choir. his work seemed like an endless chain of moments burning down like fire.

years passed until she found his notes, beneath old clocks and dust-worn tools— in faded ink, the words he wrote: "time breaks all men and all their rules,

but in these gears, i've found my way to hold what's precious, what we miss— each clock i fix helps time to stay a moment longer, just for this:

that you might learn what i have known— it's not the hours we must save, but how we spend them, how they're shown in every choice we make, and gave."

a reminder to nurture hope

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there's a special kind of torture in being someone's salvation and afterthought in the same breath.

just thinking

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spare parts

nothing cuts deeper than being useful.

my hands have learned the weight of a phone that never rings until your world starts burning.

you wear my devotion like a coat - heavy when you're cold, discarded when the sun returns. i've watched it gather dust in your closet.

i practice smaller versions of myself, learning how not to want more than you're willing to give, how to fit in spaces you leave empty.

there's a special kind of torture in being someone's salvation and their afterthought in the same breath.

they never tell you how hope can rot from the inside, how it festers in the spaces between what you need and what they're willing to give.

tonight i understand why mechanics keep broken things: not to fix them, but to harvest what's left for spare parts.

don't let people use you!

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and still don't understand

i practice saying "i love you" in front of bathroom mirrors i see someone who's supposed to know, and still don't understand i watch the coffee grounds grow old in dad's forgotten mug while mom refuses to let go and still don't understand friends call it a lightning strike, a moment when time stops i've been hit by lightning twice, and still don't understand three people have my heart tattooed somewhere on their skin i can't remember their middle names, and still don't understand they say time makes it clearer but i'm twenty-one now feeling smaller than before and still don't understand what if everyone's broken all in the exact same place calling the cracks a purpose, and still don't understand.

this one is very simple- about not understanding much about love.

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ships passing in the night

in depths where stars dissolve to sea,  where darkness holds its gentle sway,  your vessel's lights once called to me- a beacon at the edge of day. each night, i'd watch the western sky for glimpses of your distant sail, while you'd search eastward, wondering why our signals seemed to fail. you sought a shore to call your own, a harbor safe from storm and tide, while i still yearned to sail alone- through waters deep, wild and wide. the sea between us ebbed and flowed, each wave a moment slipping past,  while time carved out its ancient road through waters far too deep to last. now dawn breaks different on these seas-  i've learned to love the thought of shore, while you've found safer harbors, these  where i can't follow anymore. sometimes when midnight splits the moon and throws its silver on the wave, i wonder if we sailed too soon,  or if there's anything to save from all those nights we nearly met,  when stars aligned but never quite,  when all the words we'd soon forget  were lost between our ships at night.

about two people who were drawn to each other but wanted different things - only for desires to reverse when it was too late to reconnect

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the anatomy of obsession

Obsession doesn't announce its arrival with fanfare or dramatic proclamations. 

Instead, it creeps in quietly, disguised as dedication. As passion. As the noble pursuit of excellence.

Years passed, and I found myself dissecting everything that caught my interest. The curve of a brushstroke became a mathematical equation. Emotions in a stories transformed into clinical analysis.

What began as curiosity morphed into something more demanding, more insidious.

I'd repeat the same motions. The same sequences. Over and over. Not out of joy, but out of a compulsion I couldn't name. Each repetition was an attempt to match some invisible standard I had constructed in my mind. A standard that existed nowhere but in my own increasingly narrow perception.

C and I had our usual coffee spot - a small café tucked away on a side street, the kind of place that collected stories like others collect dust. That morning, she was different. Radiant. Her hands moved with an excitement that used to be familiar to me.

She was swiping through photographs from her recent trip to South America. Not professional shots. Not carefully curated images meant to impress. These were moments. Fragments of memory captured with an intimacy that took my breath away.

One photograph stopped her. Her grandmother's kitchen at sunrise. Steam rising from a coffee pot. Morning light filtering through a window, catching dust motes and creating a golden atmosphere that seemed to breathe with memory.

C's face transformed as she described the moment. How she'd woken up early, sitting with her abuela in a silence more communicative than words. "We both knew," she said softly, "that this might be our last morning together."

But I wasn't listening. Not really.

Instead, I was dissecting the photograph with a clinical precision that would make a surgeon look sentimental. Harsh shadows. Cramped composition. Technical flaws that screamed so loudly I couldn't hear the story she was telling.

Before I could stop myself, I started offering "constructive criticism."

How with proper training, these snapshots could become art. How she could improve her technique. Adjust her lighting. Reframe her compositions.

C's fingers traced the photograph's edge, her touch gentle. I watched her hand, recognizing how far my own touch had become, clinical, distant. The steam rising from the coffee pot seemed to blur, and suddenly I saw not the technical flaws, but the warmth between a grandmother and granddaughter.

My critique died on my lips.

Our coffee grew cold. An awkward silence descended, thick and suffocating. C's fingers kept brushing over her phone screen, as if trying to protect those memories from my dissection. When she finally spoke, her voice was different.

Smaller. More guarded.

"I just liked how the light looked that morning," she said quietly. "It reminded me of my grandmother's kitchen."

Something broke between us that day. Something delicate and irreplaceable.

She left early, her pastry half-eaten. Our next coffee date was cancelled. And the one after that. When we did meet again, she never showed me another photograph.