To look to you for acceptance leaves me exhausted—
A beggar tracking footprints in the shifting sand.
I chase your affection, a phantom costed,
Yet you ignore the steady offering of my hand.

What more must I do? What debt remains?
How else must I alter my essence, bend my spine,
Just to soothe your needs, to quiet your pains,
And scrub away every lingering trace of mine?
What is required today, what new disguise,
For me to finally be worthy in your eyes?

Your words are vague, a muffled art,
Because they live deep, shrouded and apart,
Behind the iron cage surrounding your heart.
I strain to hear even the faintest whisper there,
Leaning into the cold, the quiet, the despair,
Hoping to learn what it takes to make us whole—
Yet I continue to fail, a fracturing soul.

Why do you punish me so deeply, day by day,
Keeping me weighed down, anchored in the gray,
When you know you have no need for me at all?
The cruelty of holding tightly to what you despise
Frightens me more than any sudden fall.
For I release my enemies, I let them rise—
While you cling to yours, and watch the spirit die.

The cost of this friendship feels unbearably high,
A heavy tax paid to an empty sky.
Sometimes I wonder, as the silence grows tall,
If you are truly present with me at all.

You speak my name with a practiced pride,
A trophy of loyalty you wear outside.
You tell those who will listen, eager and loud,
“This is my dearest friend,” to impress the crowd—
Yet you have no desire to know my heart,
Content to admire a ghost of a part.

Instead, you offer the annual apology, on cue,
A predictable ritual to make old things look new.
A secular liturgy meant to soothe the stark truth
Neither of us wishes to confront in our youth:
That you are not truly my friend, in the end.
Perhaps worse still, a truth more profound:
That you do not know how to be a friend to anyone around.

This performance of our non-friendship deserves a stage,
A grand spotlight for our hollowed-out age.
It deserves an audience, a ticketed show,
A theatre full of strangers sitting row upon row,
Watching us stumble through the same tired act,
Miming a bond that we long ago cracked—
Shouting like a panto crowd, restless and low,
For both of us to finally let go.

“Behind you!” they would yell into the glare,
And perhaps they would be right to point there.
Perhaps behind us both stand better friends, unseen,
Waiting just past the edge of the screen,
Biding their time for the courage and grace
Neither of us has found to step out of this place.

You fail to recognise your strengths and gifts
Because you were conditioned to forget them.
Blinded by the world’s deliberate drifts,
You buried the crown and kept the hem.

Your loving, well-meaning parents searched the crowd,
Looking to society for inspiration and a sign,
Instead of meeting your gaze, silent and proud—
Remaining there long enough to witness the divine,
To see the truth already living, spark and line.
Even as a child, your eyes carried the map,
The blueprint of who you were meant to become,
A sovereign soul resting in nature’s lap,
Knowing exactly how it longed to hum,
To flourish, to rise, to beat like a drum.

But that truth was overlooked, left on the shelf.
The world was invited to shape you instead,
To rewrite the delicate prose of your self.
So you were moulded, stretched, and misled,
Dismantled and rebuilt by hands not your own,
According to expectations that were never yours to house.
And in the rebuilding, the seeds you had sown
Were left behind in the dust of the house.

Now you walk through life like a ghost in the grid,
Searching for a missing limb you cannot see,
Sensing an absence where the true self hid,
An ache for the person you were meant to be.
Eventually, the compass spins, and you turn inward.
You begin following the map written in the bone,
Hoping it will guide you back, step by step, backward,
To gather the fragments of the self you used to own.

But why must it take forty years to see?
Why must a person spend half a lifetime’s grace
Recovering the gold that was visible and free,
Shining from the beginning on a child’s face?

Could there have been a gentler way to mend?
A faster way to gather the pieces from the ground,
Before the cracks became the identity we defend—
Before the wound became the only home we found?

I looked into your eyes and saw a vast emptiness,
A hollow canyon where the self should reside.
For a moment, I almost reached out to your distress,
Responding to the currents you so carefully hide—
Not to the polished sentences you were weaving,
Tailored and trimmed to please my listening ear,
But to the silent ache that left me grieving,
The unsaid truths you would not let me hear.

I must admit, your mastery of tongue is profound;
Your words arrive like jewels, thoughtful and bright,
Beautifully arranged, with a comforting sound,
Polished to perfection in the artificial light.
Yet even they are not sophisticated enough to disguise
The deep, echoing vacancy living behind your eyes.

In the theater of my mind, I began to peel away
Five distinct layers of the armor you wear,
Hoping beneath the armor, the mask, the display,
I would finally meet the real person hiding there.
But even with those heavy layers removed,
You still felt impossibly, desperately far away,
An untouchable ghost whose presence was unproved,
Stranded in the fog of a perpetual gray.

So I closed my eyes.

And then, for the first time, the illusion died.
No longer distracted by the emptiness in your gaze,
I turned inward, casting the physical aside,
And met you through my inner sight’s steady blaze.
Soul to soul we stood, beyond the practiced line,
Beyond the performance, the language, the artifice of youth,
Beyond whatever heavy armor you carry to align—
We met in the clearing of an unvarnished truth.

It was beautiful there.
Quiet. Honest. Real.
A sacred space where the severed can heal.

So next time we meet in the noise of the day,
Do not mistake me for rude, do not turn away,
If I choose to close my eyes while speaking to you.
It is not indifference, nor a sudden retreat—
It may simply be the only way my vision holds true,
The only way our spirits can finally meet.

I must fix it, for if I do nothing, it will be terrible.
I must show up as expected, on time, on cue,
For if I do not, the judgment will be terrible.
I must fill the silence, lease the empty space,
For if I do not, the awkwardness will be terrible.
I must say hello, smile through the grace,
I must look my best, paint over the trace,
I must give my attention, put myself out there—
For if I do not, the fallout will be terrible.

A drumbeat of musts in a desperate race.

Then you stop.
The momentum halts in the air.
And you think.

Terrible for who?
Who are they, exactly, sitting in the stalls?
What gives them the authority to judge your falls?
And who, in the courtroom of the mind, judges the judge?

How strange that the architecture of a life can be built
On the shifting, ghostly sand of an unnamed fear,
Governed entirely by the tyranny of “they,”
An anonymous jury we keep forever near—
Yet most people have never truly stopped to ask,
To peer past the footlights, to strip away the mask,
And demand to know who “they” even are.

Perhaps that is the real terror in the dark:
Not the failure, the silence, or the missed mark,
But to spend a lifetime bleeding for a phantom line,
Performing for an audience that was never clearly defined.

I hate them.
They are inferior, a lower design,
And so I convince myself my hatred is justified,
A holy crusade to protect what is mine.

This hatred inside me is vast, a suffocating sea,
But I cannot place it upon my family.
I cherish them too deeply, their flaws and their grace;
My blood runs through their veins, my history in their face,
And I love them fiercely, with a desperate, defensive pride.
Yet the hatred still remains, a feral thing inside.
It demands a destination, a map, a name;
It insists on a victim to shoulder the blame.

So I look toward those over there, across the divide,
The ones history and literature have already prepared,
Laid out on the altar where the conscience is spared.
I am taught they are lesser, a narrative old and grim,
And in that cruel lesson, I find permission at the rim.
Permission to unload the poison, the venom, the grief,
The internal rot that I cannot bear to keep.

How convenient it is that they have been declared small.
How comforting it is to believe they were made to fall,
Crafted by destiny to carry what I refuse to confront.
This hatred has been corroding every cell in my chest,
A slow-burning acid that denies me my rest.
So I cleanse myself, a twisted baptism of blame,
By placing it onto you, by calling your name.

You can endure it, I tell myself, as I turn the screw,
Because surely hatred is nothing new to people like you.
And as I empty myself of it, casting the load,
I feel lighter. Relieved. As if a sickness subsided.
Almost healed on this dark, solitary road.

But what kind of healing requires another human soul
To become the container for the sickness making you whole?
What kind of innocence survives by the blade,
Manufacturing a basement where the inferior are made?

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the simplest truth of the breach:
The hated often did nothing, committed no crime,
Except exist in the light, within arm’s length of reach,
Of a person unwilling to face their own shadow in time.

My beloved daughter, come close, take a page.
Step into the shadow of this quiet archive.
My book is endless, written age upon age,
Because I have lived long enough to survive—
To witness, endure, and record truths so profound,
They could guide not only the ones of my time,
But generations still asleep in the ground,
Seeking a rhythm, a reason, a rhyme.

Take a page, for even a single leaf torn free
Can become the compass, the map that you wear,
To navigate the wild and unpredictable sea
As a strong woman, grounded and aware.

Take a page, because the wisdom traced here
Is worth more than the gold that the merchants will sell.
Gold may decorate your life, bright and clear,
But wisdom will preserve it, and keep the soul well.

Take a page for the heavy days yet to arrive,
When your breath feels seized by a sudden grief,
By fear, disappointment, or the struggle to thrive—
Let these ink-stained lines offer relief.
Let these words steady you, an anchor in the dew,
When the world attempts to unmake and unwrite you.

And then, in time, when your own seasons turn,
Write your own pages in the margins of night.
Transform every scar and every slow, painful burn
Into wisdom, into language, into blinding light.
Turn your life into a masterpiece, deep and complete,
A testament of understanding that time cannot beat.

So that one day, when the winter winds blow,
Your children may sit where you are sitting now,
Beside the same fire, in the same quiet glow,
To open your book, and with a peaceful brow,
Take a page for themselves, and learn how to grow.

It is not that she cannot weep,
but that she fears the rising deep—
that once the salt begins to spill,
the flood will rise, unbidden, still,
and drown the ones she gathers near,
the tender souls she holds so dear.

Stand firm, I tell myself, be stone.
Do not let feeling claim the throne.
For every wave will peak and slide,
so plant your feet against the tide;
endure the trough where dark is thick,
where silence makes the spirit sick.
Look out: the world is bright and loud,
a dizzy, unsuspecting crowd.
Join in the madness, blind your eyes,
ignore the rot, the destitute cries.
Turn your gaze to brief delights
to drown the turning of the nights,
while sorrow’s barrel gains its pace,
a hurtling doom no hand can chase.

A mother cast her child away
for some grand good she could not weigh,
so blinded by a noble lie
she never heard the infant cry.
Now grown, that child bears in her chest
a hollow nothing puts to rest;
though blessings crown her through the years,
she starves for love baptized in tears,
longing only for the one
who left her beneath a colder sun.

I weep, then look to gilded things,
the hollow peace that comfort brings,
to numb the rush, to check the dread
of living while already dead.
For death is not just breath grown cold—
it walks in bodies bought and sold.

Yet I take refuge in the light:
my children’s triumphs, pure and bright.
This joy is vast enough to mend
the broken spirit near its end—
a mother bent to bone and dust
who chose to keep what she was trust,
who could not bear to let them go,
and pours each day, through quiet woe,
her last remaining ounce of mind
to love the ones she leaves behind.