lana

we accept the love we think we deserve

[lanabyrinth]

"i don’t care" i say as i put her name into the searchbar again

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i miss the validation my english teacher gave me

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i‘m yet to find a thought in my head that isn’t dirty.

i don’t mean perverted. i don’t mean sexual.

just dirty.

dirty with a hue of accidental murder, deserved hate or a self-inflicted illness.

what if i never had the thought what if.

what if i never had to wrestle with compulsions only my mind seemed to understand? what if i never had to explain scenes so bizarre only to then realize; they only took place in my head?

no one saw the little demon on my shoulder no one saw the bacteria on my desk no one saw the allergy i may or may not have no one saw the tears no one saw the fear

no one saw me..?

me. maybe it‘s a part of me? i grew up this way i don’t know if it‘s me or something that attached itself onto my back.

but i know we share the same bed at night, and maybe that‘s enough to say that it‘s exhausting.

[lanabyrinth]

i keep learning the same lesson through different times. i see footsteps in the rain and have yet to see someone not only leaving a place, but also arriving somewhere else. i see leaves falling from a tree but i am yet to realize they dance their way down. i see an elderly woman but i am yet to understand she used to be young, younger than me.

i see endings, i see endings in the middle and even in the beginning.

i see the sunset without realizing the sun is shining even then.

i see the shards but i don’t think about the structure it once held.

i see dried petals before the plant even sprouted.

maybe that‘s why life places so many endings onto my path. maybe the only way to appreciate a beginning is to come to peace with the end.

[lanabyrinth]

i moved on but i think i still love you, does that even make sense

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I don't miss you at night

I miss you at 8:47 in my english class

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her eyes

lately, I've been thinking about my mom a lot. the way her eyes lost their spark, the way she looks at me like she went under the sea and can't muster up the courage to swim back up. I see myself in her a lot, but I don't know if she sees herself in me.

I don't know if she remembers the girl she was before she met my father. that draining, endless hole. the killer of stardust, the end of her childhood. I don't know if she had those nights, nights like mine. nights where you go to sleep; praying to a god you don't believe in, praying you won't wake up.

I don't know if she had those moments where all she felt like was failure. seven letters that swallow you whole and take over your identity. my name has four letters but I feel like these seven.

I don't know what dreams she had before she had me, but I can tell she hoped for a different child. and I can't blame her, really. I can't blame her for being angry at what I've become. cold, closed off and so angry.

five letters, angry. maybe my identity was no longer a spectrum of characteristics, instead I became a mixture of those letter combinations. seven and five.

and I don't know of she ever felt like that.

[lanabyrinth]

you’re on my mind lately

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turning 18 feels surreal but at least i‘m legal

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it feels weird being older than you although you were born a year before me.

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you look at me like i‘m something you‘ve already won. maybe i don’t want to be so easy.

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expecto patronum?

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late thoughts pt II

lately, I keep learning the same lesson.

or maybe the universe is tired of whispering and has started craving it into my bones instead. it's always something about letting go, about paying attention to what hurts

about not reaching for people who only offer cold hands.

There’s a soft anger growing inside me — not loud, not violent, not dramatic. Just a quiet, tired burn. The kind that settles behind the ribs like a small winter, the kind that reminds you of every time you should’ve walked away sooner, every time you stayed because you hoped someone would thaw.

I keep meeting people who feel like winter. People who speak in frost, who love in temperatures that make you shiver, who pull you close only to leave you standing in the cold. They are distant smiles, unfinished sentences, the kind of presence that feels like absence wearing a human shape.

And every time, I try to be summer. I try to warm what does not want warmth, hold what was never meant to stay, heal what was already breaking long before it touched me.

That’s when the universe sighs. As if to say: How many times must you learn that some hearts are not seasons you can change?

The soft anger grows not because of them, but because of me— because I keep hoping winter will turn into spring if I just stand there long enough, if I give enough warmth, if I shrink myself into something more bearable.

I think the lesson is this: not everyone deserves the version of me that melts for them. Not everyone deserves the heat I carry. Some people are meant to stay cold, and some distances are meant to remain distances.

So I am trying to listen this time. To the universe, to the ache, to myself. Trying to let the winter-people be winter-people. Trying to honor the soft anger instead of burying it. Trying to believe that the lesson will hurt less once I finally learn it.

And maybe, one day, I’ll stop confusing frost for tenderness. Maybe one day, I’ll stop offering my warmth to those who never wanted it. Maybe one day, I’ll choose someone who doesn’t feel like winter.

Until then, I walk through the cold with my hands in my pockets, breathing out little clouds of truth, learning — again and again — what the universe has been trying to tell me all along.

[lanabyrinth]

my heart is a museum of things I never said

sometimes my heart feels like a foreign room, quiet, dimly lit, lined with glass cases that hold the things I never found the courage to speak.

here lies the apology I owed you, wrapped in dust.

here lies the sentence that would have changed everything.

there lies the "please stay" I swallowed because I was too goddamn proud, too scared, too convinced you'd walk away anyway.

I walk through these halls at night, when the world is asleep. I stop in front of memories like old paintings, studying every detail, every shade of almost. some pieces still glow with warmth; others have faded into grey.

there is a whole room dedicated to you - to all the words that got stuck in my throat, all the small, trembling truths I carried like stones in my pocket. "I love you" sits at the center, untouched, the most valuable exhibit. the plaque reads: never shown to the person it was meant for.

I keep thinking I'll dismantle this place one day, let sunlight in, clear out the dust, but I never do. these unsaid things are part of me now - the quiet architecture inside my ribs, the echo beneath my skin.

maybe one day I'll learn to speak before the moment passes. maybe one day I'll say what I feel without fear. but until then, my heart remains a museum;

full of exhibits no one will ever see, hallways no one walks, and words that never made it into the world but still found a way to live inside me.

[lanabyrinth]

heart shaped box

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why I keep writing

I write because some feelings don't know how to stay inside a body. I don't know what I feel until I read it, until the pages speak back to me. they press against my ribs like something living something restless, something that rebels to die quietly. so I let them spill onto paper, into screens, into the quiet corners of my nights.

I write because memory is slippery. because some moments disappear before I'm ready to let them go, and this is the only way I know to keep them a little longer - not alive, but preserved. I was never good at keeping things alive.

dried flowers between the pages of an old book.

little pieces of paper in jacket pockets.

I write because my mind is a maze. thoughts wander without a map, circling back to people I shouldn't miss and versions of me I barely recognise. when I write, the labyrinth opens for a moment, just wide enough to breathe.

I write because it's the one place I don't have to explain myself. where contradictions can exist side by side; softness and rage, hope and grief, the girl I am and the girl I pretend to be. here, both exist without apologising for their tone.

I write because silence has sharp edges. it cuts deeper than words ever could. and I've learned the hard way that regret stings more than impulsiveness; that I'd rather say something and regret my tone than regret not saying anything at all.

I write because I've lost too much already. thoughts. people. versions of me and life that almost happened. this is how I keep the remnants close.

and I guess, in the end, I write because it saves me in small ways. because it brings me back when I wander too far. because it's the only way I can turn ache into art, and loneliness into something that feels a little less isolated.

this is why I keep writing.

and maybe, why I'll never stop.

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night thoughts pt I

I never said.

the night feels heavier when words get trapped in your chest. I wanted to say it - three simple syllables - but the world never gave me the courage. I rehearsed it in the dark, in whispers that never left my lips, imagining you smile, imagining the way your eyes might have softened if you'd heard me.

but now it's too late. you are gone, and all the unsaid words lie like stones in my stomach. I reach for the past, I reach for bottles and cigarettes and hope that something of the past is inside. I can almost feel your presence - but it's just a shadow, just the echo of who you were-

I tell the moon instead. I tell the quiet streets outside my window. I tell the pilot beside me. "I love you," I murmur, hoping somehow it will reach you - maybe the stardust will carry it up to you. even if only in the wind, even if only in the night.

and maybe that's enough - maybe saying it, finally, in the silence of this small, dark hour, is its own kind of confession.

even if you're not around to hear me.