a personal archive

Selfish

I learned how to smile correctly,
the kind that doesn’t ask questions.
The kind you use when someone says
they’re revisiting old places,
checking if the doors still open the same.

There was warmth between us once,
nothing dramatic,
just the quiet kind that makes you linger
before leaving a room.
Enough to notice.
Not enough to claim.

When they spoke about the past,
I listened like it was weather,
something moving back in,
something I couldn’t stop
even if I wanted to.

I told them I hoped it worked out.
And I meant it
in the way people mean things
when they’ve already accepted
the cost.

Somewhere between those thoughts,
I stay quiet,
holding what I never asked for,
hoping nothing
and hoping anyway.

November 6^th

I thought about how their laugh
lingers after it’s gone,
how my mind reaches for them
without being asked.
Nothing rushed.
Nothing resisted.

Single Cigarette Flashes About….Cigarettes

American Spirit
burned slow
so you could pretend
self control
was a personality.

I didn’t smoke 
for the nicotine.
I smoked 
to borrow five minutes
from myself.

Last Night

The night had teeth,
frost biting at the edges of the street,
our breath blooming between us
like something alive again.

What remained between us
we learned to leave untouched
our hands forgot the rules first.

Your fingers brushed my sleeve,
an accident that lingered,
heat traveling through wool and skin
as if winter had made a mistake.

We stood closer without deciding to,
shoulders nearly touching,
every almost louder than the words
we didn’t say.

I remembered you in pieces
the deep dimple when you smiled,
the way silence never frightened us,
how warmth used to live in your hands.

The cold kept pressing in,
but we were learning it again
how closeness pushes back,
how fire doesn’t always rush.

When the night finally asked
for something real,
you leaned in
careful, familiar, new.The kiss was soft, unhurried,
a promise neither of us named,
just enough heat
to survive the winter.

Recalibration

Chained to the bottom of a chemically imbalanced pit,
where every thought stalked me
quiet, relentless,
wrong.

But even there, a pulse remained,
a thin thread pulling me back
from the edge of myself
to something almost living again.

Branta Canadensis 

When grey skies linger and the hours blur together,
you come as sunlight threading its way through reluctant clouds—
soft, steady, impossibly bright.
There is a quiet courage in you,
a calm, rising power that makes the world feel possible again.

You lift me upward,
toward altitudes I long ago forgot were mine,
teaching me that warmth endures
even when the heavens hesitate to part.
Your light does not cry out; it simply glows—
a gentle vow that storms must pass,
and beyond them, hope still breathes.

And there, above every shadowed valley
I once dared to cross alone,
you sit atop the peak of my mountain,
wings poised in quiet triumph,
the brightest truth my soul has ever held.

Pockets of the Desert

Winter tried its best to bite,
but even cold has its hesitations.

At the bottoms of the hills,
where the road dipped low beside the lake,
the air turned warm—
a hidden pocket the desert kept for itself.
Like passing through a breath someone forgot to exhale,
a hush of heat that wrapped around me
just long enough to make the cold believable again.

The desert night clawed at the silence, hungry and unrestrained.                                   

cacti stood like quiet witnesses,
and the sky stretched wider
than anything meant to be owned.
I rode as though time had loosened its grip,
as though the desert had opened a door
only motorcycles knew how to find.Even now,
when the memory rises,
I can feel that warmth catching my chest—
brief, impossible,
a secret the night trusted me to keep.

A One Night Stand

It arrived as nothing more
than a moment—
a brief, borrowed closeness—
yet it clung to me like residue,
a film under the skin
I can’t scrape clean
no matter how many times
I try to shed it.

I keep pretending it stayed behind,
that it belonged to the night
and not to me.
But fragments linger,
caught in the quiet corners,
pressing inward
like a bruise with no color
and too much memory.

There’s a heaviness now,
a kind that never speaks—
just settles grain by grain,
dragging thoughts downward
until the weight becomes familiar,
almost natural,
almost mine.

I can’t assign blame.
This thing didn’t carve itself into me.
It only touched the outline
of a weakness I’d buried
and waited for it to breathe.

So I live with the aftermath—
not regret, not longing,
something colder,
the recognition that I traded
a piece of myself
for a fleeting warmth
I never needed.And whatever that trade awakened
still follows—
a quiet shape of guilt,
never asking anything,
never leaving,
just settling behind my mind
like a hand I cannot see
but always feel.

Consequence of Actions

I was waiting—
far longer than anyone should wait
for a door that never opened,
for a voice that never called my name.

And in that long, thinning silence,
something else appeared—
not what I wanted,
not what I was aching for,
just a presence shaped like distraction,
warm enough to quiet the cold
for a moment I mistook
for mercy.

I let it near.
Not out of desire,
but exhaustion—
a tiredness carved from years
spent holding space
for someone who never arrived.

And afterward,
the quiet returned heavier,
as if all I’d done
was stain the place
I’d been saving
for the one who never showed.

Now the memory sits in me
like a wrong turn I took knowingly,
a shadow that reminds me
I wasn’t reaching out for comfort—
I was reaching for anything
that proved I still existed

It wasn’t love,
not even want—
just the echo of a door
that stayed closed
until I stepped into a moment
I never should have touched.

And I’ve been wiping the fingerprints
off my conscience ever since,
knowing I only moved toward someone
because the one I was waiting for
never moved toward me.

Internal Execution

I tear into myself
before the day even starts—
ripping at every thought,
every flaw,
like a predator dismantling
something already half-dead.

My mind doesn’t criticize.
It mauls.
It drags every weakness
into the light
and beats it bloody
until all that’s left
is the shaking thing
I call “I”
I sentence myself
over and over,
a private execution
carried out in whispers
pacing around the room.

Every memory becomes a weapon
Every mistake becomes ammunition
Every breath feels stolen
from someone more deserving.

And in the mirror,
I meet the face of the culprit—
the coward,
the fraud,
the disappointment—
and I feel the same familiar urge
to wipe that reflection off the surface

But it stays.
It always stays.
The only enemy
is the one welded to my bones.

Made at Knifepoint

Thoughts spark,
and before they finish forming,
I’m already sprinting after them—
shoving choices into motion
like doors I don’t bother to check
before crashing through.

Every impulse feels holy,
every whim a prophecy,
until the rush fades
and I’m left staring at the mess,
wondering why my hands
always move faster
than my mind ever meant to.