Venom

Alone in a suffocating blackness

The dead of night.

A complete array of nothing

Not even the beam of a faraway star or the comforting melody of a cricket.

Nothingness.

Absorb the silence

Allow yourself to fill with space

A vacancy of thoughts

Surrounded only by the depths of your mind.

Dark secrets creep in, suddenly.

Parts of you that remain hidden, chained to a shelf

ready to break free, be revealed,

out of quarantine at last.

Unleashed like venom from a snake entering the blood of its victim

It doesn’t announce itself.

It doesn’t need to

First, a quiet burn.

Not pain—recognition.

Something foreign learning your shape from the inside.

Then warmth where there should be none.

A slow bloom under the skin,

like heat trapped with nowhere to go.

Something crosses the line inside you—already done, already there

you are no longer untouched.

It moves without permission.

Threading itself through thought,

through silence,

through the fracture between intended feeling

and what spills out instead

Can you keep the venom in?

consolidate it. erase it. purge it. mask it

Show only calm.

Don’t be your own victim.

It recognizes your silence as invitation.

Your stillness as surrender.

Even your resistance feeds the venom,

nowhere left to go but through you

the thing about venom?

It does not argue

It does not relent

It settles where you thought you were strongest

It learns the shape of your silence

It fills it.

It possesses you

Chokes you

Consumes you.

And your blood can’t fight back.

Weakened and powerless,

It stops feeling like something inside you—

and starts feeling like what you are.

Not an intrusion.

Not an invasion.

A rewriting.

Something in you goes quiet,

not gone, not healed,

Silenced.

LIGHT

Be the light in someone’s eyes

look in a mirror and never cry

keep yourself upright

even when you’re splitting

hide your tears away

just drift through unmarked days.

until that mirror shatters

into a puddle of doubt

watch it crack slowly

splitting your reflection in two

until you don’t recognize which side is you

darkness seeps in, quiet overtaking thought

the light flickers

not gone, just thinning

like breath on cold glass

it lingers where certainty used to stay

a trembling gold that forgets the way

it once could fill the hollowed air—

now only shivers, faint and rare

still you wait inside the dim,

where edges blur and hope grows thin,

for something steady, something true—

a fragile pulse you once knew too,

to hold the dark from taking you

drag yourself back from the cracks

no one needs to see

keep the light from flickering out,

though it burns instead of thee,

no matter how hard you plead,

you still can’t set it free

it used to be easy,

to glow without thinking

to shine without weight

but the thing is, the light always fades

the mirror will break and the brightness will turn to ache

to carry the burden of someone else’s light,

is to bend under it, swallowed by night

can you be restored?

Or was nothing ever truly broken—

perhaps this was always the design,

a fate quietly spoken,

that the light was never meant to define you,

only to leave behind you

and in the dark

you search the shattered pieces

for a version of yourself that still shines

beyond the weight of all those tight confines.

Follow the tide

freeze amongst a path

drawn by the roar of a silent stream

pulling you in

claiming its grasp

like a hunter digging its claws into its prey

poor prey

undeserving prey

will you become the prey?

evil looks so nice

oh how it sings softly

its utter success

its total victimization

immense and unforgiving

a bovine figure

hidden behind virtuous eyes

eyes that call to you

eyes filled with sweetness

like succulent juices of forbidden fruit

how can you resist?

like Eve in the garden

full of desire and temptation

unaware of what awaits her

you must give in.

human nature is greed after all.

succumb to your cupidity

its quick repugnance raises you

but it’s too late.

consumed with regret,

now awake to danger in the face of innocence

it’s not your fault, you only followed the tide

how could you have known the bitterness that lay beneath

now, your naivete has vanished

there’s no looking back

taken by the path

its evil corpulence engulfs you

and there is no way back

and it does not end.

this is where it begins and ends

welcome, and goodbye— to the rest of your life.

Bloom

Budding

Blooming

Bracing against the frost

Breaking the grip of the dark

Basking in the amber reach

Breathless and bright

a soft beat of color

in a brand-new light

Believing in the bloom

Now, the silk unspools

veins like glowing lace

mapping out a sudden, velvet world

each petal a translucent sail

drinking the gold of the afternoon

colors so sharp they sting

honey-thick and sugar spun,

dew held in leaves like borrowed light

petals unlearn their folding

slow as a secret being forgiven

each bloom leans toward its own weight

as if softness has direction

roses split into slow amber silence

heavy with memory

lilies uncoil white and deliberate

a scent like sharp clean water over stone

lavender breaks the air with soft angles

quiet, bruised purple rising through heat

poppies flicker—paper-thin,

almost translucent

trembling with their own brightness

orchids hang like small captured thoughts,

patterned with impossible patience

smelling faintly of wet bark and glass,

like something grown inside silence—

a soft beat,

the gold holding off the frost.

the dark, now only a memory.

unspooled from the root

the color finally owes nothing to the ground.