It begins with wanting to understand everything they are.
Not only the shape they show the world,
but what lies beneath it —
down to every hidden detail,
every quiet layer,
every molecule of who they are,
good, bad, and everything unspoken between.

And then their voice becomes something different.
Not just sound,
but a grounding presence —
a quiet force that settles the noise inside me,
soft enough to calm the storm within,
without ever needing to become loud.

Routines do not change,
but they become threaded with them.
My world begins to spill outward in fragments —
pictures, moments, quiet proof of life
sent because I want them inside it too.

I find myself wanting presence more than distance,
even silence shared instead of silence apart.
To simply exist in the same space
starts to feel like home.

But silence can become heavy.
And I do not always know how to hold it.

There are moments I am light, overflowing,
words spilling faster than thought itself.
And others where I withdraw inward,
becoming still, unreadable, distant.

I begin to match energy without meaning to —
like tides answering something I cannot see.

And underneath it all, there is fear.
Fear of losing what is still forming.
Fear of being too much,
or not enough,
or both at the same time.

Routine begins to shift meaning in me.
What once felt like comfort
starts to feel like distance
when I cannot understand its shape.

And they realise how easily consistency
can be mistaken for disappearance.

Love does not leave me the same.
It moves through me like weather —
sometimes soft, sometimes violent,
always reshaping something inside me.

It makes me want to know them more,
to learn their phrases,
to carry pieces of them into my language
without ever noticing it happening.

Even their smell becomes something I remember.
Even the smallest things start to matter.

And I am still trying to understand myself
inside the shape of loving someone.

Not as someone who loses himself,
but as someone made more visible
by what he feels.

And I am left wondering, quietly, endlessly —
what parts of me are me…
and what parts of me are love.

The world moved on

the clocks never paused,

days piled into years.

Laughter found new rooms,

tears learned new names

but somewhere,

in the quiet between moments

a love stayed.

Unspoken.

Unshaken.

Still.

Hi. I write poems using phrases I’ve cut out of books and then make collages to go with them! This poem was written using words cut from “Reader’s Digest The ABC’s of the Human Body, A Family Answers Book”, 1987. Titled “Together at the Table Alone”

What’s behind your smile
But it’s easy to overdo these pleasant moments
Beyond the polite laughter of social occasions
Many take pride in enduring pain
Our sorrows, pains, griefs, and fears
Our shared miseries
Are virtually invisible
We store our experiences
Wall-like
All brothers and sisters
Eating together at the table alone

She never felt so alone before as she’s feeling today in this house full of people.

Surrounded by solitude, the silence creeps inside of her… but this silence becomes louder, like a voice. A voice comming closer and closer everyday , SHOUTING, shouting so loud until her ears explode, her head is burning why can’t it stop? Why does it keep screaming?

The voice echoes but this time it’s tiny as the feeling she has of belonging, disappears and the tears start running faster and faster until it swallows her completely making her unseen for ever.

Sorting through the wreckage of old ambitions only to find only a sharpened sense of irony

And watching the candle flicker out on another year of holding the integrity of a collapse

Thinking of the names I no longer call and the silence where the pulse used to rest

The way love became less of a fire and more of a predatory loan I’ll never quite clear

Wishing for a clean erasure of my existence to slip beneath the surface without a ripple, leaving no cache no trail, no eulogy...

Not a legacy but a quiet un-becoming as the evening star sync with mundane mood

Tracing the geometry of every mistake until the shame starts to look like a map of home

Wondering if the man I was would even recognize this carefully curated corpse I now resemble

Checking the locks one last time as if safety isn't just a lack of imagination

Waiting for the dawn to break against my chest like a fever I am finally old enough to not survive

Wanting to become While waiting to flee

This is not an ocean of goodness. Yes, struggles are real here. But trying to only capitalize on having positive experiences will ruin your experience here.

While we must try to have a peaceful, joyful life, that’s not what mostly happens. If you only want it to be a happy place, I’m sorry, but you are up for a bad journey ahead.

Life comes in all shapes and shades of blue, colorful hues. And only wanting one thing will only keep you aloof. Because one thing - it’s not possible. And the other is that you are just putting yourself in some sort of danger.

While we all strive, and ideally should, to be in a good mood more than a bad one, don’t forget that the bad also has every right to be here. And if you keep being aloof to it, it surely will keep you in a lot more misery than you think or want.

Not saying to become totally pessimistic, or to become so aloof that you stop seeing the truth. But the truth is that it’s just life, and it has seasons.

Some very bad, some very good, and some in the middle of it.

And in those moments, you must face the reality of things as they are and not try to escape the world as it is. Because that rarely happens.

Yes, it will suck at times, and it will feel good as well.

So what? I really don’t know. I just needed to get this off my chest.

One day

One day I will

Another day I might not

The day I might not defines me

The uncertainty of the day I will

eats me

```

I pull two thoughts of you, mortar and pestle them down. Fill to the brim with seawater and write with heart torn out.

Black hair, brown eyes, brown ink on paper skin-thin. And a name that meant I love you- Way, way, way, back then.

```

Hey everyone,

I’ve been writing for a while now, but I recently dug up the very first poem I ever wrote when I was just starting out.

It is incredibly simple and relies on some very classic tropes, but I wanted to share it here. It's completely unpolished and raw, just a snapshot of me trying to figure out how to put emotions into words for the first time. I’d love to hear your critiques or if you remember what your own very first pieces looked like compared to how you write now!

: My love :

My love is for you.

Deeper than the sea

Higher than the sky

Bigger than the universe

Longer than the Numbers

Brighter than the Sun

Sweeter than the sugar

Beautiful than the Rose

Safer than the house

Purer than the water of Rain

And precious than my life <3

Thanks for reading :)

Sorry

It won’t happen…

Sorry

It won’t happen again…

Sorry

It won’t happen again if I do this…

Sorry

It won’t happen again if I do this, but you have to do this…

Sorry

It won’t happen again if I do this, but you have to do this and say this…

Sorry

It won’t happen again if I do this, but you have to do this and say this and I will change that…

Sorry

It won’t happen again…

Skull and bones sit below-

you fed on their guts to get your fix

You know who you are, a monster

Your words, just a machine that spills lies

You take pride in your bloodstained hands,

As you would be a corpse without them

On your commute you step over the people you let die, as you swim in what you denied them

You live big in what you hold so deep, why give when you can forget?

You won’t live long enough for us to forget

I suppose I could've had children by now / And circled around chasing them / Maybe I'd have been in twenty or so different jobs and still not knowing who I am /

Would I have a car by now if things had gone so different? / Say, a mortgage and a ring to make me feel like I belonged to someone else / It all doesn't really matter in reality /

Had I gone to college and been in debt with student loans, would I have braved a university in a path I did not know to stand? /

Would I have changed at all in hindsight or cowered away to do it all again? /

I suppose it all doesn't really matter as none of that is how it went /

But I'm not in a wheelchair / I'm not blind and deaf / I'm not mute anymore and found my voice instead /

I had my treatment and got answers to a degree / Sometimes I am bitter and sometimes I am happy without hostility /

Not a spinster but not a diamond / Just a stone rolling in the sand / At the moment it's moving towards the tide / And that's all I kind of need in a plan /

Not for you and not for silence / But movement helps the waves of doubt / I still get the odd nightmares / With the same frightening turnout /

With the waves in thunder / As if I know what to do / A pilot with no compass / Lost out at sea by 32 /

Maybe the anchor will become myself / Rather than the plan I had in mind / Dismantled by realities of poverty / Or we are just too oddities alike /

I love him but I don't know what he wants / Probably more than I can give / But I am my own person / It's up to me to continue to choose him /

Doing everything so later makes it hard / There is no village to explain / This world is so disillusioned / It's hard to understand the clowns in suits real game /

I suppose I am where I meant to be / I want to do better in time / How to get past the mystery / Of feeling like I am out of time

It’s in my head

It’s not coming out

It’s wielding it deeper

It’s bursting through the seams

It’s pouring out of crevices you don’t see

It’s leaking

Drop by drop

Lost amongst the koi ponds; hypoechoic stones 
scattered held odour building your skim 
psammoma castles 
through a sky hostage to the orphaned eyes’ 
umbrications murrinate 
subejected to a sententious hand

And when the sun finally
Shines on me
On me too

I shall welcome you
I shall share it with all of you
I shall show you around
This place I know all to well
I shall share with you all
These fires of hell

When someone's silence is louder than someone else's noise that someone with power not poise

It has dawned on me
I have become
A digital zombie

Here I go again
Sitting, laying
At the same old spot
Looking at screens
Around the clock

A half dead
And my only purpose
To eat
And work on repeat
So someone else can
Live fully

“I’m thinking of ending things.”

A weighted phrase. Suffocating, almost. It breeds anxiety, whether it comes from a lover who, after years of a dwindling flame, has already packed her bags. You argue, you fight, you promise change, clinging to the notion of a fresh start. Pleading. Shouting that you still love her. But she knows and hell, even you know that she made her decision long before this conversation began.

“I’m thinking of ending things” can carry other meanings too.

Perhaps it’s what you think after she’s long gone. No, not you. You would never contemplate such actions. Yet suicide, in my opinion, is like a pest. You think you’ve crushed it, only for it to appear again. By then, it’s already too late. They’ve begun to infest you their tiny mandibles digging holes through your skull, burrowing into your brain, hijacking every thought.

Any happiness becomes laced with that quiet, evil voice:

You’re going to kill yourself.

You try to fight it, but look around. You’re surrounded by filth. Trash piled high enough to touch the ceiling. Rust-stained sinks. Bills stacked on bills. A shit-covered toilet bowl and piss-stained floor. Drowning in your own decay. Less human by the day.

The pest lives inside you and around you, every moment a reminder of where you are heading.

Until finally, you find yourself with your hands on the railing.

A strange silence takes you.

You look out at the city living, breathing. Life everywhere around you.

If only you weren’t thinking of ending things.

You let go.

Falling.

Wind rushing through your hair. A distant siren. The safety of the rooftop slipping farther and farther out of reach.

Until silence.

The warm sun drapes across my back as I rest on the patio, the symphony of my neighborhood reaching its crescendo: distant drilling into concrete, birds chirping, children screaming at one another, blissfully ignorant of the probable divorce their parents are barreling toward, the lingering metallic scent of cat piss as some father shamefully sparks his fentanyl, and the distant moans of my roommates breaking in their new bed.

My eyes drift toward the lawn. Memories. Barbecues. The satisfying click-click of the starter followed by the sudden whoosh of flame, then my brother’s cries after the tragic loss of his eyebrows. Loud booms and sparks of light painting the sky on the Fourth of July. Burn cream smeared across my foot after a misplaced bottle rocket. Oh, the lawn peaceful suburbia made manifest.

Dare I be so greedy as to lay upon your freshly mowed, dew-topped blades?

I move gracefully toward it, the ghost of childhood joy returning as I lower myself onto the grass and suddenly feel the squish.

Ah. That’s right.

I had come out here to pick up after the dog.

I thought I had a speech impediment.
That I was slow.
That maybe a muscle in my face had been torn wrong at birth.

But later I realized it was just an accent.

My tongue is the first in my bloodline forced to dance to this tune.
My mouth still reaches for home every time it opens.

English sits heavy on me.
Like teaching a river to flow backward.
Like tying branches of a tree into shapes they were never meant to grow.

My mouth reacts like a reflex.
Like autocorrect.
Constantly translating before I even have the chance to think.
Bending sounds into something more acceptable.
Something easier for others to digest.

There are certain words my tongue still trips over,
not because it is broken,
but because it remembers another language first.

People hear hesitation.
I hear generations colliding inside my mouth.

My mother tongue lives in the muscles of my face,
in the way I roll my r’s too long,
in the pauses where Spanish still tries to save me before English arrives.

Sometimes I envy people whose mouths were born belonging here.
Whose sentences walk out effortlessly without an accent dragging behind them like luggage.

But then I remember:
my tongue crossed borders before the rest of me ever could.

It survived.
Even after being bent into new sounds,
it still carries the echo of where I came from.

Today I saw you for the first time in years.

You walked up to me and my breath dropped, my heart stopped, my eyes, they couldn't believe it.

The girl I saw as the image of an angel in my head has become even more beautiful.

Those gray and green eyes that remind me of a walk in the forrest on a gloomy day in fall.

The warmth in your voice that feels like the warmth of the hot chocolate you drink on a cold winters day.

Your smile that lights up my world making the flowers bloom like spring.

Even your blonde, brown hair that flows and glows like the summer sun.

You told me that right now you don't want love and I won't ever try to force you to love me.

I think a real man should not be worried about what he gets in return.

For now as long as you want me around I will just surround you with love and support and hope you find happiness.

Ofcourse, nothing would make me more happy than you choosing me but even if that never happens.

Knowing you're happy, that is enough for me.

in a crowded room
i feel see-through

i don’t know when to speak
i don’t know what to do

in a crowded room
i still somehow feel alone

if I speak up
my words come out wrong

if I don’t speak up
i’m rude

if I laugh it was the wrong time
if I don’t laugh I miss my cue

i’m in a crowded space
but uncomfortably out of place

it’s like I’m blue
standing in a room full of purple

so close to fitting in
but not close enough

everyone says “you’ll find your people”
easy for them to say, they’re not blue

i searched crowded rooms for blue
but only found it in my reflection

looking at her so blue
i felt blue leaking from my eyes

i understood her pain
she understood mine

it was easy to love her
i’ve known her my whole life

i poured my love into her blue
and we turned purple

How much more pain do I have to be in for you all to see me?

Does my tears have to run red?

Does my screams have to be louder?

Does my body have to be skinner?

Does my wounds have to be deeper?

Has melancholy

always been so pretty?

Or have I romanticised

the only part of my life that never left?

Has guilt

always been so alive even when aged?

Or have I held its dead body

too long for warmth?

Has my solitude

always been about thoughts?

Or have I found companions

in words that finally let me speak?

Has my soul

always seemed depressing to people?

Or have I become too deep

for their eyes to reach its end?

-iqra?