They taught me,

sticks and stones may break my bones

but words will never hurt me.

That’s the first lie I ever swallowed whole.

Because bones?

Bones know how to knit themselves back together.

Skin bruises, then fades like last season’s storm.

But a word,

sharp, careless, flung without thought,

it sinks deep,

like a splinter the body can’t spit out.

“Never hurt me”?

Tell that to the boy who stopped raising his hand in class

because “dumb” stuck like glue in his throat.

Tell that to the girl who hasn’t looked in a mirror for months

because “ugly” is tattooed across her reflection.

Tell that to me,

and the thousand me’s I’ve met,

walking heavy under the weight of syllables

we never asked to carry.

Words are architects.

They can build a cathedral in someone’s chest

or smash the stained glass

so all that’s left is rubble and echoes.

So when you speak,

know this:

you are not tossing feathers into the air.

You are planting seeds.

Some grow gardens.

Some grow weeds.

Either way, something takes root.

Sticks and stones may bruise the body,

but words, they bend the spine,

rewrite the map of a life,

tilt the horizon until someone believes

they were never meant to rise.

So speak like every sentence

is flint sparking a fire,

like every phrase might be

the rope pulling someone back from the edge.

Because yes,

words hurt.

But words also heal.

They are the medicine,

the bandage,

the bridge.

And when we choose them right,

when we wield them with care,

we prove the old rhyme wrong.

Sticks and stones can break my bones.

But words,

your words,

they can save me.

There was a man who found a hollow in the earth.

It was no trap, no snare set for him,

but a shallow dip, plain as day,

where the soil gave way to the press of a foot.

He stepped down, curious.

He pressed his heel into the dirt.

The earth crumbled easily,

and in his hand was a shovel.

It was light.

It fit him well.

And with a laugh he struck the ground.

The digging was joy at first—

the rhythm of blade to soil,

the scent of the earth rising,

a secret place growing around him.

It was his own,

a pit fashioned by his pleasure.

When he tired, he would look up.

The rim was close,

sunlight still brushing his face.

He could have climbed out with ease,

but the shovel was near,

and digging was simple,

so he bent again to the work.

Seasons passed.

The pit deepened.

Its walls grew steep.

The air grew heavy,

but the man knew no trade but digging,

so he widened the grave of his own desire.

Sometimes in the quiet,

he whispered to himself,

This hole is my home.

Other times he trembled,

for the silence answered back,

This hole is your end.

He began to see no escape.

His arms ached with the weight of the shovel,

yet he could not release it.

Better the familiar labor,

he thought,

than the climb he did not know.

But then,

one day,

he saw it.

A thread of light at the lip of the pit.

Not blinding, not bold,

but steady as a candle in a storm.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes,

and found it remained.

So he cried out.

Not with eloquence,

but with the raw plea of a drowning soul:

“Help me.”

The light did not argue.

It did not scold.

It reached.

Invisible hands, strong as stone,

grasped him where the shovel could not.

They drew him upward,

past the walls he had carved with his own rebellion,

past the shadows that whispered of death,

past the earth that still longed to swallow him.

At last he stood upon solid ground.

The sun struck his face.

The air was clean again.

The pit gaped behind him,

a wound in the earth,

a testimony.

He kept the shovel.

Not to dig again,

but as a relic,

a memory of folly,

a warning to his heart.

For he had learned:

The pleasures of digging are sweet for a moment,

but the hole always deepens.

The pit has no bottom

except death.

Yet the Light.

the Light has no shadow,

and those who call to it are not left in the dark.

I rolled to the hill where the wild grass grows,

Wheels catching soft in the summer’s clothes.

No hand pushed me, no one came —

Just me, and you, and the evening flame.

You watched, like always, from your high-up place,

Gold dripping slow on my hollow face.

I asked, “Do you burn for people like me?”

You said, “Little one, I burn so you see.”

See what? I wondered — the sky, or the pain?

The way breath goes like a windowpane?

The birds that sing like they’ve never cried?

The tree that dances though its roots have died?

The wind held quiet as I spoke to the light.

“You never leave. That must be nice.”

You winked behind a veil of cloud —

A soft reply, not said aloud.

I said, “They left. All of them did.”

And the sun just leaned on the blue and hid.

But not for long. It came back through.

“I’ve never left. I burn for you.”

I coughed a prayer into my sleeve.

A warm goodbye I could believe.

And as the stillness settled in,

The world no longer turned within.

The sky bowed low, a hush so wide,

And in that silence, something replied.

“Get up,” said the sun, with a voice like gold,

“Your legs remember what they were told.”

And I — no longer curled and thin —

Rose like fire and walked again.

I wake up

and the first thing I do

is avoid myself.

That mirror’s a god I don’t pray to anymore.

It’s a curse, a glare,

a silent reminder

that skin can be a coffin

even when you’re still breathing.

Look at you.

No, really—look.

Eyes like grief held too long

in a leaky basement.

Jaw clenched like it’s trying

not to scream

because if it did,

it wouldn’t stop.

I trace the outline of my face

like a crime scene,

wondering when it became

a place I couldn’t come home to.

The mirror doesn’t blink.

It just stares.

Mocking.

Mimicking.

Murdering me

with every detail I cannot change.

People say

you should love yourself.

That it’s as easy

as clicking your heels

and humming affirmations in the dark.

But they don’t know what it’s like

to live in a body

you want to unzip and step out of,

to peel your own name

off your bones

and forget it ever belonged to you.

I’ve broken mirrors

with fists full of thunder,

hoping the shards

would show me someone else—

someone better.

But even shattered,

my reflection finds a way

to crawl back into the glass.

And yet…

One morning,

I didn’t look away.

Not all at once.

Not with kindness.

Just… less hate.

A second more.

A breath.

Like maybe that person

wasn’t the villain,

just the wound.

Maybe I wasn’t built

to be beautiful

by anyone else’s standards—

but maybe

beauty isn’t the point.

Maybe survival is.

Maybe standing here,

eyes swollen,

heart cracked,

still breathing,

still trying—

maybe that’s the holy part.

I ran fingers over my reflection today

and didn’t flinch.

Didn’t spit.

Didn’t wish I was born

as someone else.

I just said,

“I see you.”

ink slips

from the tongue of a broken faucet

midnight drinks it

a cricket trades silence

for brass,

but no one buys

he floats

in a suit too quiet for heartbeats,

watching earth smear its colors—

a marbled sorrow

spinning slower every year.

no alarms,

just the sigh of the hull,

soft like the hush of curtains

drawn in a house long unlived.

they called it abandonment,

this leaving.

but he calls it

a choice.

down there,

voices curl like smoke—

fewer windows lit,

more mouths moving without sound.

here,

he drifts beyond clocks,

grinning,

as the stars bloom like old friends

in a field no one visits.

oxygen thins—

a slow untying

of breath from bone—

and he smiles,

because silence

never left him

alone.

the wallpaper peels like memory

in this room that forgets

how to breathe.

a single moth flutters

against the window—

all sound, no direction.

i feed the silence

with broken clocks

and names i don't use anymore.

the floorboards confess

in creaks and whispers—

things i never told anyone.

somewhere,

the rain keeps falling

but never lands.

in the water, a reflection waits.

it's eyes stab through, not at, me.

they see what is internal and invisible and secret.

they see beyond the outside shell that smiles.

i step into the water and welcome the cold embrace.

it welcomes me.

There are words I never said,

stacked like unsent letters in the quiet corners of my mind.

I wonder if they would have made a difference,

if the air would have carried them gently,

or if they would have sunk, heavy as regret,

into the marrow of another's silence.

I measure time in unfinished thoughts,

half-felt emotions that linger too long,

like a song I almost remember

but hum out of tune.

Somewhere between what I am

and what I pretend to be,

there is a space—

a breath caught between ribs,

a hesitation before a truth too raw to name.

I press my palm against the window,

watching the world move without me,

its rhythm foreign,

its pace relentless.

And yet—

in the hush of my own reflection,

in the weight of my own stillness,

I find something I had forgotten—

I am here.

The hallway stretched endlessly in both directions, lined with towering doors, each one sealed shut with iron locks. The man had lost count of how many he had tried. His fingers were raw from prying at knobs, pounding on wood, twisting handles that refused to give.

Some doors bore intricate carvings, golden plaques whispering promises—wisdom, wealth, redemption. Others stood bare, indifferent, offering nothing at all. Yet none would open.

He had begun this search in desperation, fleeing from a past that clung to him like a shadow. He told himself that beyond one of these doors lay escape—relief from the weight he carried. If only he could find the right one.

But as time dragged on, hope unraveled. His strength seeped away with every failed attempt. His knees buckled. He slumped against the cold stone wall, forehead pressed into his hands, whispering a broken plea.

"What else can I do?"

And then—silence.

Or perhaps not silence, but stillness.

In that stillness, he noticed it.

A door behind him—plain, unmarked—slightly ajar.

There was no handle, no lock, no carvings to tempt or promise. It had been there the whole time.

His pulse quickened. How had he missed it?

With trembling hands, he reached forward. The door swung open at the gentlest touch, and warmth spilled out, wrapping around him like an old embrace. A voice—gentle, steady—echoed from beyond.

"I was waiting for you to stop searching… and simply come."

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he hesitated. Not from fear, but from something deeper—an understanding. The struggle, the searching, the doors that led nowhere… they had never been the way.

He stepped through.

And behind him, the hallway disappeared.

Somewhere, in a place he had long since forgotten, a man woke up to a new day. His hands no longer trembled. The weight on his chest felt lighter. The craving—the hunger that had driven him to search for so long—was still there, but distant now.

A breath. A moment.

And then, he rose.