Bright & Salted

It's too late to turn around I'm in it too deep.

[irisili0]

Even though I’ve felt left out before, I know I deserve to belong. The right love and friendships won’t leave me behind—they’ll choose me again and again, no matter how imperfect I am.

[zz-shi]

You can always recognize someone who has suffered, they listen more than they speak.

-Sh𝚒

[asapbarti]

Between Wet Silence

The rain has just folded itself away,

leaving the street breathing,

a long exhale of wet earth and iron.

I walk where lamps should be,

but the poles stand empty,

black spines against a sky still bruised.

Puddles hold pieces of the clouds,

dark and slow,

as if the heavens forgot themselves down here.

No voices.

No doors arguing with the wind.

Only my footsteps,

softened by water,

learning the language of quiet.

The night is calm, not kind, not cruel,

just wide.

Clouds drift low like unspoken thoughts,

heavy, watching,

yet unwilling to fall again.

I move through the street unseen,

a thought passing through another thought,

while the world, rinsed clean,

waits for morning

without asking questions.

[asapbarti]

THE DAY THAT DIDN’T EXIST.

My birthday arrived,

but the house didn’t flinch.

No “cake,” no ritual,

just the dull hum of appliances

pretending it was any other day.

My siblings were loud chapters

in a book that got read out loud.

I was a footnote at the bottom of the page,

half erased by the editor.

I still “acknowledge them, be there for them.”

I watched candles multiply on their cakes

while my own years went unlabeled.

Time kept happening to me in silence.

Once, my sister handed me a card,

wrote the wrong age in shaky ink.

I laughed at the absurdity.

How do you misplace a person so completely

that even their number becomes a guess?

After enough rounds of that,

I “reached a point where I also don’t bother.”

The heart learns to conserve resources,

cuts off funding to hopeless campaigns.

Desire furloughed, expectations laid off,

the office closed.

Now I “celebrate myself.”

Not out of joy

but necessity.

If I don’t bear witness to my own existence,

there is no witness at all.

I buy gifts “for myself,”

wrap them, unwrap them,

a ritual of one.

A birthday observed by the only person

who remembers I was born.

[asapbarti]

Sleepwalking Through the Wrong Dream

we all fit inside, same rite different passage

promised more than a promise

we slip through the canal, with or without approvals of yourself

i play chess but i keep checkmating with this void mate

why are you afraid of what you can't simply put your hands on ?

more to this than my eyes have seen ?

spare me !

spare me !

he knows all your names

and and dark black truths you wish no soul hear

do you feel from the other line, does it still hums, do you seek still?

no questions, i ask nothing aloud

i restrain myself

but my body language has a different dialogue of what i bury under ribs

back on ground, i lay flat, figures... alot of figures stare but i am standing still, kind of familiar

flash, gone; from their minds,

time ticks no linger

photos, when i see i remember futures i didnt reach yet

i reminisce of what could be

what could have

the silence, gathers its private depth deep i drown in its abyss

right looks left, up looks down

its feels im going up instead of down in this trench

echos return faster, than the origin itself

in a loop i cut off, smells like no loop at all, its snaps

the silence felt more of a vacuum, warms across my shoulder it covers me like a duvet bedding meant for winter

[asapbarti]

R U N !

I run,

but not with my legs.

I run through side streets of thought,

through alleys where memory loses breath,

where footsteps echo a second too late.

Behind me,

nothing is chasing me.

That’s the problem.

The danger knows my name.

It walks.

It waits.

So I run anyway,

heart loud, face calm,

like someone who learned too late

that stillness can be a trap.

If you’re shouting it,

it means you saw something.

And if I’m already moving,

it means I did too.

[asapbarti]

I Found a Body in My Background

I was smiling in the photo.

Sunlight behaved.

The day looked innocent enough.

Later, zooming in,

there it was.

A shape that did not belong to joy.

A limb misplaced.

Stillness too deliberate.

I don’t remember killing anyone that day.

Memory is strange.

It edits.

It crops the unnecessary.

The body rested behind me

like a typo in reality,

quiet, patient,

confident I would notice eventually.

I studied the details.

The angle of the neck.

The way blood learns gravity.

The signature I swear I never sign twice.

My hands felt clean.

That bothered me.

I replayed the hours.

Breakfast.

Small talk.

A laugh that landed perfectly.

Somewhere between those moments,

something else must have been awake.

The body wasn’t accusing me.

It wasn’t asking for justice.

It felt familiar.

Like a thought I’d already finished.

I cropped the photo.

Posted it anyway.

The likes came in.

No one mentioned the background.

No one ever does.

But now I check every mirror twice.

Every reflection feels crowded.

Every silence feels rehearsed.

Because if there’s a body back there,

calm and forgotten,

then the most dangerous thing about me

is not what I do.

It’s how easily

I keep living

around it.

[iexistorwhateva231]

A walking contradiction

I am benevolent but cruel

I am selfless but selfish

I am careful but careless

I am beautiful but ugly

I am thin but fat

I am joyous but depressed

I am plentiful but lacking

I am intelligent but clueless

I am extraordinary but ordinary

I am healed but hurt

I am a walking contradiction

[asapbarti]

Night presses its thumb into me

until sleep leaks in.

Not rest.

Suspension.

I close my eyes knowing

they’ll be taken from me soon.

That knowledge sits in my chest

like a quiet debt.

When I wake,

it isn’t morning.

It’s absence.

Light hasn’t arrived yet,

and neither has mercy.

I lie still for a second.

Not to gather strength.

To feel the weight of staying here

one last time.

Then I leave it.

The ground is hard

in a way that doesn’t explain itself.

Each step peels something off me.

Excuses go first.

Then hope.

Then fear.

Breath turns violent.

Thoughts fracture.

There’s a point where pain stops escalating

and becomes a place.

I enter it

and keep moving.

No music.

Nothing to soften the truth.

Silence watches closely

and records everything.

When I stop,

my body shakes

like it wants to confess.

I don’t let it.

A smile arrives

without asking permission.

Not joy.

Recognition.

I didn’t abandon myself.

Later, alone again,

paper waits.

Ink bleeds.

Hours collapse inward.

My eyes burn

but quitting would burn more.

I don’t tell anyone.

There’s nothing to tell.

This isn’t a story.

It’s maintenance.

Some mornings carve you out

until only intention remains.

No comfort.

No witnesses.

Just a quiet agreement

between who I am

and who I refuse to become.

And that agreement

costs me daily.

I pay it

without complaint.

[mournfulroses]

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vanessa Bell, featured in The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf

[mournfulroses]

Natalie Diaz, from a poem titled "September 2001," featured in The World Keeps Ending And The World Goes On

[asapbarti]

I didn't miss them.

And that crushed me.

I expected guilt, sadness, nostalgia — but instead?

Nothing. Just utter silence.

And in that silence, the truth hit me: the "warm bond" I thought we had only existed in my head.

Most of my struggles weren't even mine.

"Money is always hard." "Love is sacrifice." "Don't stand out."

These weren't just phrases — they were chains I never saw. Until they were gone.

And when their voices disappeared, I realized how many of my battles were fights I was never supposed to be in.

I saw how much of my life I lived just to earn their approval.

The career I chose, the clothes I wore, the people I dated — all shaped by the need to make them proud.

But pride is not love.

And I'd been starving my whole life calling it a meal.

Without their constant presence, I finally started hearing myself.

My own thoughts. My true ambitions. My real boundaries.

For the first time, I wasn't just someone's child — I was a man with his own path.

Scary, yes. But also liberating.

And here's the hardest part:

Family can say "I love you" while destroying who you actually are.

They can hug you and still teach you fear.

They can call it "care" while building the very walls that keep you small.

And if you never step away, you'll never know where they end and you begin.

Silence doesn't destroy relationships — it reveals them.

And sometimes the only way to heal is to step back far enough to finally see: what you called "love" was actually control.

[asapbarti]

A Heart That Turns to Stone

It does not happen all at once.

No thunder. No warning.

First, the softness retreats,

like water pulling back from a shore

that trusted it.

Feelings learn restraint.

Love lowers its voice.

Hope stops asking questions

it already knows the answers to.

Each disappointment lays a brick.

Each silence seals it tighter.

Not out of cruelty,

but survival dressed as patience.

The heart remembers warmth,

but only as a language it no longer speaks.

Touch becomes information,

not invitation.

People mistake this stillness for strength.

They praise the calm.

They do not hear the weight.

Stone does not break easily,

but it feels everything beneath it.

Every step. Every pressure.

And somewhere deep inside,

where no one thinks to look,

the stone remembers it was once alive,

waiting.

[asapbarti]

The Sound of Silence After Betrayal

It is not quiet.

It is crowded with unsaid things.

Silence arrives heavy,

not like peace,

but like a room after glass has shattered

and no one moves.

Trust leaves first.

It does not slam the door.

It simply fails to stay.

Words line up behind my teeth,

then sit down.

Apologies echo too late.

Explanations fold themselves smaller

until they fit nowhere.

This silence has texture.

It hums.

It presses against the ribs.

It remembers every promise

in perfect detail.

Eye contact becomes impossible.

Every look is a question

that refuses to be answered.

I listen for closure.

Nothing responds.

Only the sound of realizing

that what broke

will never make the same noise again.

And in that absence,

something else is born.

Not forgiveness.

Not hatred.

Distance.

It speaks fluently.

[asapbarti]

A dream that refuses to end,

still warm at the edges,

still breathing behind closed eyes.

Morning knocks,

but the door does not open.

Reality waits in its shoes,

patient, offended.

The dream keeps talking.

Not in words.

In colors that have never learned names,

in feelings too heavy for daylight.

You walk through it knowing

you should wake up,

yet every step feels necessary,

scripted by something older than you.

Time behaves strangely here.

Minutes loop.

Faces blur into meaning.

Loss and joy borrow the same voice.

Even doubt feels rehearsed.

When you finally open your eyes,

the dream does not leave.

It hides in the way your hands move,

in the pause before you speak,

in the sense that something important

was said without sound.

And all day long,

life feels slightly misaligned,

like a song played half a note off,

because somewhere inside you,

the dream

is still happening.

[asapbarti]

The Last Thought of a Dying Star

I have burned long enough

to forget the dark that made me.

Hydrogen dreams braided into light,

I learned how to roar without a mouth,

how to be worshipped by dust.

I taught planets how to circle devotion.

I taught time how to glow.

Every second, I gave myself away

in photons flung like confessions,

never asking if the void was listening.

It always listened.

It always waited.

Now my core tightens its fist.

Gravity remembers my true name.

The math turns cruel.

The fire folds inward.

I am thinking one final thing.

Not regret.

Not fear.

Wonder.

Did my light arrive in time?

Did it kiss oceans awake,

etch shadows behind a lover’s shoulder,

or die halfway, unfinished, anonymous?

I feel myself becoming silence,

yet louder than I have ever been.

A scream stitched into space,

a bloom of ending so violent

it gives birth.

If this is death,

it is not disappearance.

It is redistribution.

I will be iron in blood,

calcium in bones,

gold in a hand that trembles

before a promise.

I collapse

so others can begin.

The universe leans closer.

My last thought is simple,

and it shines even as I break:

Nothing that burns this hard

is ever truly gone.

[asapbarti]

SHADOWS SOMETIMES LIE

By the shores of Victoria, perched on a warm rock in solitude,

I sit - aware of my consciousness.

Waves of emotion crash, then gently fade,

a never-ending quest.

Tranquil tides ebb and flow,

my heart finding rhythm with the waves.

A cool breeze drifts from the south,

slapping my face, whispering in my ear:

"You’ve come this far."

So I breathe the wind,

fill my lungs with fresh air,

let sunlight ignite this present moment

where darkness once lived.

A conversation within -

questioning, debating, playful, profound -

thoughts drift by like clouds in time-lapse.

I wander in the abyss of my mind,

eyes lifted to heaven

as the sky burns in hues of fire,

the sunset glowing calm.

The past lingers; memories sting.

Yet in quietude, I find solace.

Worries sway away.

Peace is not outside, but within -

a gentle hum that carries me forward.

I follow the path it opens,

embracing the journey,

where growth takes its stand.

Here, I am free -

a soul unchained,

walking with joy, hand in hand.