Red Thread

incense ash in thin air,
a quiet wish
with both palms closed.
took me five winters
to belong
only to me.

then you,
like morning tea poured

into cold porcelain,
too fast, too close
to cracking the cup.

you leave your shoes by the door
as if staying is easy.
no riddles in your words,
no traps under the rug.
perhaps this lack of danger
makes my knees weak.

old habits are hard to quiet.
a body so used to bracing for the fall
flinches
even at an open hand.
each morning you get closer,
I hold my breath,
and wonder whether to pull away
before you feel my racing pulse.

fear is a heavy curtain.
at the edge of the window,
I squint at the sudden gold,
unsure if stepping into the shade
keeps me safe.

please hold still.
maybe my hands are only shaking
because the sun is new.

Jackowski, Wiktor. Eclipse. 2013, oil on cardboard, 15 x 20 cm.

Counting

We grew up learning the wrong math,
measuring a room by its shadows,
a body by temperature,
a life by hours and years.

But yesterday, in a room full of grief
for a boy who returned to the earth too soon,
no one spoke of the gold he gathered,
only the light he left behind.

If we change the unit,
the universe shifts.
What if distance isn’t counted in miles,
but in the silence between two apologies?
What if wealth isn’t coins in your pocket,
but warmth you leave on borrowed coats?

And what is a father measured by,
if not the safety in his voice?
What is a daughter measured by,
if not the tenderness she carries back home?

We trade hours for wages,
but maybe a minute is only worth
the oxygen you give back to a suffocating room.
Maybe a year is just a collection of afternoons
you made someone feel like they belonged.

When the pulse finally dims,
and the body forgets its own name,
the earth does not ask about your glory.
It only knows the kind of weather
you become in a season,
and how you keep returning
to the lives of those who remember.

When my turn comes,
do not tell me
how long I was here.

Tell me I am the ocean I calmed
in someone else’s chest.
Tell me I am the echo
that refuses to leave the room
long after the music stops.
Tell me I left something

gentler than I found.

Richard Claremont (Australian b.1965), Ten Minutes (South Coast), 2026, Acrylic on board

Pocket Galaxy

Your skin
on my wrist,
the dark listens.

A river runs
under your fingers,
it sold me out.

Isn’t it cruel,
how this coin-sized witness
asks for honesty?

Dial in your hand,
weather in my chest—
Thirty beats.
Forty. Fifty.
Maybe more.

I forget math when you’re close.

Scotch,
or mischief,
they flood my veins all the same.

Music dissolves,
and the room fades.
Just us now,
caught in the current,
with all else in orbit.

And then you let go.

I walk out
with your shadow,
still counting.

My pulse,
a small galaxy
that won’t dim.

Stardust

I keep your coordinates
folded in my purse,
a map that only opens
when I’m bleeding.

Your room is the same desolation,
the couch still cradles
our two solar systems
running after the same horizon.

Outside, the night presses its face
to the glass.
You let it in.
I remember how easily
you make darkness
feel like home.

I come back anyway,
not like a promise,
more a habit
the body mistakes
for gravity.

You pour me bourbon,
strike a match,
and watch the flame catch.
You never flinch
at the bright parts of me,
always only waiting
for the soft collapse.

Your hands still hold
their beautiful refusal,
closed as fists
around nothing.

I tell myself
this time I’ll stay
at the edge of you,
safe at a distance,
but distance is a myth
in a room this small.

So I fall.
Again.
A familiar return.
My ribs, sunken, learning
the shape of your silence.

Some stars are not meant
to be touched.
They still burn.

And I still come back
to the same orbit
to be reminded
what I can’t change:
I can cross the sky
a thousand times
and you will remain
the altar
where I burn to ash.

(Interstellar →)

« Hors du Temps »

un océan pâle

suspendu dans la chambre

je respire un vent
qui ne pèse rien

tout est devenu
si transparent

même les âmes
sont pressées

je flotte
entre deux secondes
qui ne se touchent jamais

Saffron Morning

Brothers and sisters,
are you eating
or only pretending to
so the body won’t ask again

this morning
I braided my hair
slowly, by the window,
making sense of what keeps loosening

outside
the street keeps breaking
into smaller streets

a window coughs its glass
somewhere a door learns
it can be dust

I rinse my face
with water that has no patience,
cold enough to make me honest

the kettle trembles
on a little blue flame
a miniature sun rehearsing

I listen to a piano waltz
soft as a hand
trying not to wake the dead

I tell myself
if I can make heat
I can make a minute

if I can make a minute
I can make a day
out in the streets without vanishing

I keep wanting to gather the world up
the way you gather spilled grain,
one frantic handful at a time
until your palms lose grip

but the truth arrives
like a bowl set down between us
asking only for the next mouthful

There’s no one else to save tonight.

Not the city
not the men with rifles
not the men with roses

Tonight I can only reach
what is inside my arms

my throat
my pulse
my hands learning steadiness

I drink water
I eat a few bites
I swallow my fear in pieces

and if there is a universe in me
let it be stubborn,
let it fight to live for even just a day

so that when the street stops scattering
like grain from a torn sack,
when the air no longer tastes of gunpowder,
I can walk out
carrying a small measure of grain in my palms,
without spilling it

Of Ghosts and Rain

Thirty-one arrived without architecture. My face hasn’t changed, still forget meals, and indulge in the laundry warmth. Some afternoons still stretch thin as paper. Others dissolve before the second coffee. I don’t count time anymore. Most days aren’t good. They’re just less loud.

I started drinking water again, slowly. Not in the dramatic way I imagined self-care would look like, more like a collection of habits that feels less theatre.

There was a time I used to write each day like a photograph, trying to make it carry something heavier than it had to. I thought maybe if I caught each second, it would be worth more. And there was a time I worshipped language, shaped it into meaning, whether or not it wanted to hold anything.

Today, somebody asked what I was working on. I said something vague about reflection. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the answer either. I haven’t written anything true in a while. Not because I’ve run out of things to say, but because not all of it needs to be framed.

I’ve tasted every illusion and spat them out like bitter wine. The story I once told about myself, the one that made the chaos sound romantic, I don’t miss it. I’ve stopped listening for ghosts.

Growth, if it’s happening, moves two degrees slower than I can measure. People talk about it like it’s forward. But for me it’s been an undoing, not a becoming, a slow erosion of identities that never quite belonged to begin with. Every version of me, half-finished. None of them wrong, just undecided. I may never belong to anything. Not ever, not fully.

The air smells like a trace of rain from our childhood home’s balcony. If I stand still enough, I feel like I’ve already lived in this exact moment. And isn't it bizarre? That life is a series of repetitive events. Floating, nearly drowned, and oddly wish to again.

Tonight, time stretches wide like an ocean on a moonless night. I can’t tell if I’ve arrived somewhere or just stopped measuring the distance.

I still don’t know what purpose means, the difference now is I don’t panic either way. And it’s a strange freedom.

dear emily

day light / didn’t ask / if i slept / shifted the stars / without looking back / left / me in a sky / I didn’t recognize // the mirror cracked / in the corners / not from age / but memory // i used to think / the answer was a man / with warm hands / and good mornings / but he left / and so did the next / and the next / like fireworks / one after another / so loud / i didn’t have to see // but dear me / you are not a shortcut / you are the road even when / you tripped in heels / too high / for the life you were chasing // you wanted someone / to read your sadness / like a map / but no one ever / stayed / long enough / to make sense of it all // and i get it / i really do // you were the answer / you feared / tired of holding yourself / so you handed the weight away // but dear me / you are still walking aren’t you / even halfway / with one hand dragging / the night behind you / the other learning / to let go // dear me / it’s okay / if it takes time / the stars don’t know yet / you are one of them.

Bad Habits

tongues stained
violet crushed escape

you said stars
sound better

than sorries

so I left them at the party

the room pulsed,

ceiling swam

and walls lost their shape

our bodies

forgot who they belonged to

and we let them

your pupils,

two eclipses

pulling tide from the curtains.

gravity

let go,

how familiar.

half smoke,

half me.

half truth,

half you.

the moon

played dead outside,

eavesdropping on

our pretty lies.

i swallowed

another hour,

i think our last,

almost told you

that my heart caved in.

but my mouth

was full of music

i couldn’t sing

and your voice

was a match

lit under water.

et enfin

a croissant
half-warm
on the kitchen counter
i didn’t say goodbye to either

left your city
like a book
i never opened again

a grin you forgot
on my lips—
merci

the sky did try
to weep
but i packed too fast
for weather

somewhere between
paris and nowhere
i whispered to the clouds
you were kind

and we had everything
to make a memory
of june

no rewinds,
just a playlist
i skip
a little slower now

and me,
i’ll keep the dream
a dream,

et enfin
the heart
folds itself

carry-on again