V

I write poems sometimes. Good or bad, here they are.

[casualjuicebox]

Family Growth

My parents love me,

I know all they have done since the moment they learned I was coming is try.

They have carried the weight of sacrificing their own lives to being the fullest it could've been, to carry me in heavy hands, soiled with dedication.

My parents have pretended to be smaller, less, in order to give me and my siblings room to grow, they have planted the seeds in hopes as we grow our roots we will spread with the strength they have tried to fertilize our lives with.

My parents have stood on the other end of hospital doors, sat at the edge of school floors, and worked jobs that made them feel like sinking stones learning to float, continuing to come home to care for small beings who can not yet fathom manhood.

My parents have lived trying to know how to do what is the best for us, even in moments they could not have imagined finding themselves in.

Soon there is the coming moment where i do the same, where I work to create a safe life for a child I made.

My parents invite me to stay, at least an extra year or two, so that we will not suffer the fear of financial uncertainty, so that we will continue to be in the safety of their nest, they have offered to lay down their twigs a different way to accommodate the wings if we chose to have the baby before we fly away,

But I need to leave to create my own space, I need the struggle and the unknown to grow, I need to foster the love I have with the man I intend to continue to grow with before I carry a baby into a home.

I can not keep a child where I am still the child, where the father is hesitant to step because this will never truly be his home when he is treated like an encumbrance.

If I do not keep moving, there will be nothing to move towards.

I love my parents, and I know they love me, but I have to spread these roots and these wings and go in order of growth.

Painting by: Klimt

[casualjuicebox]

"If we are hungry"

There is a wolf in the woods sulking between the thick stumps of unburdened trees, silent steps over broken stone,

The whispers of the woods hush between each step, paw to soot, step after step, stalking his prey,

The woods do not protect those he seeks,

The silence creeks, rings in your ears, blood louder than the creature that cultivates the night,

Hunger.

A silence breaks, louder than the snapping of twig beneath feet,

A growl,

Not of jaw but of gut,

Hunger.

It growls from the deep, it crawls between brush, between tree,

You catch a glimpse of eyes, growing, glowing eyes,

A reflection of the moonlight.

These eyes feel like the eyes of a wolf, but they dig past cloth and flesh like that of a man licking his lips on his path for keeps.

Illustration by: Ulla Thynell

[casualjuicebox]

Existing vs Living

A person raised in love with survival and not surviving because there is no other choice but to do so - can not understand the hands of a man who has spent his entire life surviving, while the lover mistakes living for trying.

Painting by: Egon Schiele

[casualjuicebox]

(TW: Abuse/SA)

Loaded Obligations

There is a knife to my throat and a gun to my back,

Only this gun only fires when I am forced to pull the trigger.

The man holding the gun enjoys the look in my eyes as he hands it over to me, blade against my carotid artery, his teeth sharp like pins waiting to dig in to sweat pelted flesh, knowing I must perform or he will make me regret it.

Forcing me into the cold, over a joke I didn't think was a joke, because no matter who is holding the gun, only one of us knows how to take off the safety.

So when I do not laugh and he repeats back to me "God you make me feel like I am raping you" I hold my tongue and the gun, and he tells me I am the one with all the power but I have never felt more weak.

Painting by: Rithika Merchant

[casualjuicebox]

Looking For Wings On Gods Pavement

I am fluent in soft-feathered wriggling reft of prophetic Soliloquys,

Pigeon-toed wantonness wracked with Unceremoniously yearning of wilting respite,

Blazon frailties laid heavy in balmy palms in the precipice of transmogrification.

Silt swathed hallux, burgeoning-boned breasts, flourished in incipient hedonist heresy.

(This poem is a bit experimental, as I like to keep a list of words I find interesting and decided to use as many of those words as I could to create a poem)

(June 10th, 2026)

Painting by: Marija Zivanovic

[casualjuicebox]

Learned helplessness

I take a step on to the metal road ahead of me, cattled by men in white coats, my collar tied too tight, forced to walk.

I look them in the eyes as my feet - weak, suddenly burn,

A shock that hurts, it burns through the coat of my fur.

I am lead to my cage,

Cold steal bars against tender hide.

As the pain fades and I slip into sleep, the men in the coats come back for me,

Once again I am lead to the shock, I jump at the sting as the men in the coats write notes.

What is it they make note of?

Everyday I am ran across a floor waiting to hurt. What do they say as I quake?

Today, somethings changed,

A bar across the floor, the men stare, but I know what is coming, I know they are waiting for me to step into the pain,

So instead I curl my legs beneath me, I cry, waiting for a bitter burn I've learned to recognize.

Why would I expect change when all I've known is how to ache.

(September 2025)

Painting by: Sanya Kantarovsky

[casualjuicebox]

To Kiss You

I want to kiss you like you are air and I have just learned how to breathe for the first time after being born with a bag over my head,

With deep breaths, heavily and rabidly, unaware of the gift your kiss really is.

I want to kiss you so hard that we cannot tell what is what between our salivating tongues and bloody lips, grinding teeth and cheeks, skin in trade for a wet embrace.

I want to kiss you like the rain kisses your face, I want to trace my lips over your body, dripping down your chest, against your stomach, flowing down your spine, leave you a wreck, with no doubt my lips have showered over once dry flesh.

I want your lips to quiver from exhaustion of not being able to stay away from mine,

I want your tongue to feel burdened of occupying such space alone.

I want to kiss you as if I will never kiss again, and I have never kissed before.

Painting by: Wojciech Weiss

[casualjuicebox]

What do I mean

There is a whisper in the echoes of my thoughts,

I mean, what I mean is,

There is a voice that has clung to my thoughts since the moment I've first conceptualized the meaning of having thought,

I mean, what I mean is,

There is a low rumble just behind the drums of my ears, and it gets louder with age,

A beating that is eager to escape the Inner monologue tucked deep with in the canal,

I mean, what I mean is,

I can not stop.

What I mean is,

There is this feeling with in my mind that is leaking into my heart,

And the heart it seeps and weeps and it can not decipher the tone of the whispers eating at flesh soaked cognition.

What I mean is, I do not know what is being said, what words are escaping the encompassing of my skull,

The words scale down the stem of my brain,

The words get louder by the second, a whisper that is closer to a scream than it is to silence,

Silence.

What I mean is there has been a me picking away at the walls,

What I mean is, they wish to crawl from between the bones of my toes, between the strain of unfamiliar holes,

Created by the thoughts trying to speak through muscle tied pores.

What I mean is there is a sound,

I mean,

What I mean is, I can not tell what they are saying,

But there is an echo I was born with, fostered and carried and nutured by a fear I have always known,

It is waiting to be spoken.

What I mean is, it does not matter what I do not know, or what I can not hear,

The thoughts will burrow their way out through willing tongue or unwilling alone.

Painting by: Santiago Caruso

[casualjuicebox]

Even With A Shut Door

Men have found their way to the pit of my stomach, deciding this is where they'll stay.

Men have built sledge hammers out of my bones and have started to renovate as if they own the body they are staying in.

Men have torn down the paper lining my heart, lining my lungs, deciding it was just too much for them.

I have begged them to stop, to leave my body how it was, to let it be how they found it, to keep it neat, to leave if they don't like what they see.

Men do not like being told what they can and cannot own.

Men have trambled through my veins, finding their ways to my brain, building cages to lock me away in.

Men have torn, and smashed, and taken.

Men have blown out the lights, and blown holes through the floor.

Men walk on a body you asked them to stay away from, because they've learned they don't need permission to pick a lock.

To them, all doors are invitations. All houses are homes, no matter how many times you say no, no matter how many signs you put up or locks on your door.

Illustration by: Carlos Alonso

[casualjuicebox]

Needle Tongue

The caress of my fingertips dancing along your wrist,

Tracing veins twisting under your skin like the way your tongue twists inside against mine between locked lips.

The break away of your eyes makes my skin drip, sweat beaded like an addict coldly ripped from their addiction.

Your lips are laced with a dopamine rush I never thought I could feel, send me down to heaven with your touch,

Shoot your love through threaded veins,

Under my twisted tongue.

Painting by: Angelica Alzona

[casualjuicebox]

Manipulation

Do not kiss me when you are begging for forgiveness,

You know I am a sucker for such soft lips and a loving thought.

Painting by: Unknown

[casualjuicebox]

Blood milk & war times

There is a child being held in the arms of a war, combat shaped breasts fed blood laced milk to eyes red from smoke of burning bassinets.

Painting by: Sam Wolfe Connelly

[casualjuicebox]

A Positive & Negative Ion

I find the experience of being alive profoundly uncomfortable.

My soul rots beneath the surface of my flesh,

Tied to atoms clanging together,

The building blocks of faltering matter.

Painting by: Henrik Aa. Uldalen

[casualjuicebox]

Sisterly

There are hands folded forward in my lap,

With the beads of a rosary tangled between my fingertips,

A rosary my sister found in dirt in the street that made her think of me.

And for a moment with the sun bleeding in over these hands of mine,

I believe that maybe God does see,

Maybe there is a power above me.

But then I realize, the power here is the person who chooses to love me,

The one who sees is someone who thinks of me at the sight of a lost rosary,

Above is willingly dirty hands in no thought but to fill the hands of their sister.

Painting by: Nathan Chantob

[casualjuicebox]

Gaslight

They will stuff your mouth with the ash of the bridges they burned and embers hidden in soot will sizzle on your tongue, branding your taste with the memories of decay.

They will pour the gasoline over your hands in your sleep and set the house a blaze, in case you wake, you reek of the possibility of pyromania soaked into quivering finger tips, and burnt shivering lips.

They will hang your sheets above the flame, so the fire does not depart from your brain in the absence of the blaze,

Your lungs will cough in anticipation for smoke inhalation, trained by the cold hot burn of the flicker of a thought created by charcoal coated palms wrapped around tight and tenderly holding a flash bomb.

Painting by: Christophe Hohler

[casualjuicebox]

Capt'n my heart

I will hold out my hands in hopes you will take them,

I will stand in the middle of a swaying sea,

And dark clouds swirling above dark waters,

Hands out, leaning over the edge of the boat,

I will reach for you,

For you to take me where you go,

And I will risk the flood, I will risk the capsizing, being thrown over in order to touch my fingers to yours,

No rough seas could keep me away from your love,

For you are worth the storm and rocky weather's,

I am a sailor no longer seeking to navigate alone,

I will take the risk and hold out my hands in hopes you will take me where you go.

Illustration by: Rovina Cai

[casualjuicebox]

Stomach acid

I have cut myself up into pieces, trying to comfort the people I've loved,

I have served myself out on a silver platter,

Bread and butter along with my meat,

And they have eaten.

They have filled their guts with what they needed,

They have taken like they were starved, leaving me as bone.

There the pieces of me shriveled up in their stomachs,

Begging for a hand to hold, yet they ask for more.

And even when I have nothing left to comfort the growl of their hunger I try,

I try in hopes maybe there will be love for me in the pit of their digestive system,

Somewhere for me to pretend they have eaten all I had left as a way to express their satisfaction with me,

A way to tell me I've done well,

I've done good.

And here in this pit alone, I can pretend they are happy with me while the tears flow from partly acidified eyes.

Painting by: Terrineku