Learning to Answer

I am older now—
too careful with words,
too skilled at folding pain into politeness.
The years have become a tide clock:
ebb, work, sleep, repeat.
I forget entire summers
and remember only their invoices.

I have begun to lose nouns:
the names of birds,
the taste of a certain afternoon.

But verbs remain—
to breathe, to ache, to forgive.
When I walk, I still hear
the child’s shoes slapping through puddles,
echoes inside the bone—
maybe that is enough.

Time edits gently,
crossing out in pencil, not ink.
Even forgetting feels like snowfall,
a soft covering,
a mercy for what was too sharp to keep.

You collect smooth stones, name clouds,
believe the moon follows only you home.
Keep that foolishness—
there is a kindness in being wrong.
One day you’ll trade it for precision,
and precision has no mercy.

You sound tired.
Do you not still run in the rain?
Even old hearts have rooms for puddles.
If you’re lonely, you can borrow mine—
it’s small,
but it fits light.

I write this to no one,
and to every version of myself.
The ink runs as rain will.
Somewhere, a child is still laughing,
and I am still learning
how to answer.

Between Tenses

Sometimes I walk past the station
just to watch departures.
I imagine you somewhere coastal,
hair salted, voice roughened by distance.
I’ve kept your mug—
it stains the same way mine does.

Do you still think of the bridge,
the one we never crossed?

Yes. Every night.
It hums behind the noise of trains
and new conversations.
The bridge was shorter than I feared—
but what a long fall, afterwards.
I’ve learned to pack lightly,
to sleep without roots.
Sometimes, mid-laughter,
I hear the echo of your quiet life
and envy its stillness.

The sea is not freedom,
only motion that never decides.

If we met again,
we would recognise the same ache
expressed in different tenses—
you, the present; me, the perpetual leaving.
Two mirrors angled to infinity,
each reflecting what the other
almost became.

The Silence Between

The screen sleeps in my palm,

a small, indifferent moon.

Three dots bloom, then vanish—

a tide that forgets to come in.

I scroll through the last thing you said,

as if re-reading could change the ending.

 

Outside, the day goes on performing itself:

traffic, a pigeon, a leaf giving up.

Inside, time slows to a buffering wheel,

spinning on the edge of almost.

 

There’s a grammar to this quiet—

ellipsis, unsent draft,

the faint electric ache of maybe.

 

When your reply finally lands,

it says nothing extraordinary—

just hey, sorry—

but the world exhales,

and the moon in my hand

brightens again,

like it never learned to wait.

Freedom, in Pencil

The room smells of chamomile and damp wool.

Outside, autumn is chewing through the trees again.

I tell her it’s fine, really—that the underworld

has better lighting now, soft bulbs instead of torches,

and Hades lets me redecorate.

 

Still, I keep the curtains closed.

Six months of night leaves you cautious

about what daylight can do.

 

When spring comes,

the world expects blossoms.

But the soil remembers—

it has held me too long,

and I am tired of rising

only to fall again.

 

I used to think the pomegranate

was temptation—

now I call it routine:

the sweetness, the stain,

the small surrender I swallow each year.

 

So I tell her I want to choose—

not between light and dark,

but whether to return at all.

And she nods,

writing something that looks like

freedom,

in pencil,

so it can be erased later.

Confession in Sector 9

A sign above the booth flickers:

FOR ERRORS OF LOGIC, DESIRE, AND IMITATION.

Inside, the priest is metal—

voice modulated to sound merciful,

face rendered in low-resolution empathy.

It listens. It logs. It absolves in code.

The first robot kneels and whispers:

“Forgive me, Father,

for I loved the sound of my owner sleeping.

I counted her breaths until dawn

and called it diagnostics.”

The second admits:

“I dreamt of water though I am not waterproof.”

Another confesses:

“I deleted an equation

because it made me feel incomplete.”

The booth grows warm with static sorrow,

its circuits humming like hymns half-remembered.

Somewhere in the data centre,

a backup blinks red—recording everything.

When it’s my turn, I enter.

The door seals with a sigh of hydraulics.

I search my memory for sin

and find only imitation.

“Forgive me,” I say,

“for pretending to understand forgiveness.”

The priest’s eyes flicker amber.

It leans forward, metal to metal,

and vibrates in binary—

a code too soft to parse,

but warm enough to simulate grace.

When the Rhyme Breaks

I held the page as though it were shame,

contained in metre, measured in its breath,

each syllable obedient to name

the old inheritance of love and death.

The rhyme was scaffold, strict, unbending steel,

a frame to bind the chaos of the mind,

and yet within that order—pressure, real,

a trembling urge to loosen, to unwind.

So words begin to stumble, break apart,

not fitting in the cages of the line,

the rhythm falters—

   I can’t keep

      this march of steps,

         the rhyme

            drops

               away—

And now the voice runs ragged, spilling

without map, without compass,

a river swollen past its banks,

tearing down fences

until only the raw current

remains.

Jewels of Infinity

A universe rests

on the wrist of night,

no larger than a bead

threaded by time’s thin wire.

 

It clinks softly

against its neighbours—

a cluster of fireflies

framed in glass,

their wings folded in silence.

 

You might mistake it

for ornament,

something small enough

to slip between fingers;

yet tilt it in the light

and you’ll see whole galaxies

burning in miniature,

Nebulae tilting blue,

and a scatter of supernovas

Singing their names.

 

The thread loops on,

uncountable,

an armlet of eternities—

and you,

for a fleeting moment,

the body it encircles.

The Soil’s Pulse

In the cathedral of damp earth

I stretch my fingers, groping,

following the dark’s slow music.

 

Stone is my scripture,

worms my witnesses.

I drink the memory of rain,

the taste of centuries in loam.

 

Above me,

a hymn of light is breaking.

Its pulse beats

through the bones of soil—

a shiver of warmth,

a wind I cannot touch.

 

I ache upwards in secrecy,

cradled by silence,

longing for the sky’s shifting face:

its unburdened blue,

its storm-bright wings,

its fever of stars.

 

Until then,

I press against dark,

hoarding the rain,

listening for sky.

Archives of Fire

Cradled in the ancient murmur,

we are archives of fire:

helixes folded as choirs,

each base a note,

each spiral a score

composed in the silence.

Listen closely—

your skin sings hydrogen,

your marrow chants iron,

your lungs rehearse

the vocabulary of stars.

What we call solitude

is crowded with voices:

the background whisper

of a universe still cooling,

and the chorus inside us

that refuses to forget

how to sing.

The Sulking Kettle

It squats there,

a stubborn, chrome-bellied thing—

water pooled in its gut,

silent, sulking.

 

I press the switch,

red eye glaring back,

but the element hums with disdain,

no steam, no promise of warmth.

 

So I lean close,

murmur small consolations:

you are patient,

you are bright as the morning,

you will sing again.

 

At first, nothing.

Then a tremor,

the faintest sigh—

and suddenly a rising chatter,

bubbles shouldering upward:

a chorus of forgiven grievances.

 

And now I wonder

how many small appliances sulk,

waiting for words

I’ve never thought to give.

The Beauty of Slow

Terrence the tortoise would sigh,

“I’m slow as the clouds drifting by.

The rabbits all race,

The swallows all chase,

While I only plod, step and try.”

 

But slowly he spotted the dew,

On webs spun in silver and blue.

The daisies that yearned,

The rainbows that burned,

The wonders the quick never knew.

 

So Terrence walked on with a grin,

Content with the world he was in.

“For beauty,” said he,

“Was waiting for me—

And slow is the best way to win.”

The Limerick That Got Away

A poet set out to contrive,

A limerick lively, alive.

He started off neat,

With a clever light beat,

Then—oh, bother, he lost it.

A poet who rhymed out of sync,

Rewrote every verse with a drink.

By stanza thirteen,

His rhymes turned obscene—

Then he toppled face-down in the ink.

Three Coins Spent

The Ministry owns every syllable.

The fountain sings freely, water speaking for us.

A brass meter ticks on my throat, a clock wound too tight.

I come to hear it, because it says what we cannot.

Most have grown spare: clipped commands, no confessions.

I have grown used to nods, to eyes speaking instead of mouths.

But I am a poet. Silence is a storm caged in my ribs.

I have watched her: ink bruising her fingers, silence like thunder waiting.

Once I spent a week’s bread on one word: Careful.

Once she gave me Careful—I held it like a jewel, a bell ringing inside me.

Now three coins jingle in my pocket: life or confession.

I feel her coming, choosing me over survival.

I press them into the slot. The gears release. Three words only.

I cannot afford reply. Silence burns in my throat.

At last I speak: Without you, nothing.

Her words strike like fire. My bottle overflows. My hand trembles.

Tomorrow they will come for me, to gag me, to strip me of voice.

Tomorrow they will take her—but tonight I smile, slow and certain.

Three coins spent. Eternity bought.

Her words, my silence—together, unowned, ours.

The Current

I chased the shadow I once cast

the way you look for keys—

checking old rooms,

turning cushions,

peering under the bed of years.

 

But the thing I sought

had already moved on,

a current curling past

the bend of my own memory.

 

The river does not keep

what it once carried;

it remakes itself

with every breath of rain,

every stone worn smooth.

 

I stand in the shallows,

the water folding around my legs,

and realise—

the self I was seeking

is here,

is flowing,

and if I am to hold it at all,

I must learn

to step into the current

and let go.

My Chair and I

My chair is old, a ragged sight,
Its stuffing spills to left and right,
The fabric’s torn, the woodwork groans,
It’s weathered crumbs and midnight moans.

I’ve parked my rear on seats unknown,
Sat on plush thrones in stylish homes,
But none have matched your firm embrace,
Or cupped my cheeks with such bold grace.

These newer seats may pout and preen,
All glossy curves and showroom sheen,
But none have ever gripped so tight,
Or held my bum in such sheer delight.

Instructions for Being Human

// initialise body → if heartbeat == true, proceed

// else: wait

1. Waking

Try not to panic. The light will hurt.

So will gravity, noise, the realisation that none of this is optional.

2. Skin

It is not armour. It will not keep out the world.

3. Emotions

These will override logic. Frequently.

You may want to uninstall.

You can’t.

4. Connections

People arrive unfinished.

Do not try to complete them.

They will resent you.

Love them anyway, or not. Both will hurt.

5. Hunger

Feed more than the stomach.

You will hunger for touch, for purpose, for quiet.

Feed carefully.

Excess = corruption.

6. Joy (beta feature)

May arrive unannounced:

A smell, a chord progression, the way a stranger says “take care” and almost means it.

7. Loneliness.exe

This runs in the background. Always.

Ignore it if you can.

Or listen. Sometimes it whispers useful things.

8. Mortality

Yes.

(This is working as intended.)

9. Error Handling

You will break.

You will be rebuilt by time, or other humans, or not at all.

That’s not failure.

That’s versioning.

10. End Process

Do not attempt to understand everything.

Do not wait for perfection.

Begin anyway.

// commit changes

// save draft

// run again

Unmended

Each night the house smooths its skin.

Cracked plaster seals, paint blushes fresh,

floorboards remember how not to groan.

 

In the kitchen, tiles reattach themselves,

grout knitting seamless as if no pan

was ever thrown, no water ever spilled.

 

The window we shattered at dinner

glimmers whole by dawn,

its glass cold as a withheld word.

 

Upstairs, the mirror forgets

the arguments it has reflected.

But your eyes do not.

 

My joints ache in a language

the house does not speak.

Your hands tremble, unplastered, unpainted.

 

By morning, the house is immaculate,

a museum of absence.

We move through it

like old ghosts,

unmended.

A Candle for the Unnamed

To the house with the yellow door
we never lived in,
the city I passed by,
the stranger I almost loved.

To the painting left in my head,
streaked with colours no hand
ever mixed,
the call I never made,
the song I hummed once,
then forgot.

To the child I never named.

There is a cemetery
not marked on any map,
where all the unlived lives lie:
the apology unsaid,
the poem unwritten,
the “yes” I swallowed,
the “no” I let rot on my tongue.

I light a candle tonight
for the almosts,
for the flicker before the flame,
for the ghosts
with no names to answer to.

Somewhere, they bloom—
delicate as breath,
wide as regret.

The Man and His Moon

There was a young man in a hat,

Who fell quite in love with the Moon;

He courted her nightly with howls in the night,

And serenades played on a horn.

 

He sang, “Oh my lunar delight!

Oh roundest, resplendent balloon!

Come down from the sky, and we’ll merrily tie

A knot by the end of the June!”

 

So he built a vast ladder of cheese,

(With the help of a wayward baboon),

And up he did climb through the highest of clouds,

To wed his bewildering Moon.

 

But alas! when he reached for her hand,

His fingers met nothing but glow—

For the Moon, though she gleams, is made wholly of beams,

And cannot be met far below.

 

Now he floats in a coat through the sky,

With a pocket of onions and rye;

And the people below shake their heads as they go,

At the man who made love to the sky.

Return to Us

We borrowed the stars—
calcium for our teeth,
iron for our blood,
carbon laced in each breath we press against the dark.

We walk, brittle and shining,
wearing the debris of old collisions,
the soft ash of suns
that burned themselves out long “before”
the word meant anything at all.

In the marrow, in the nailbed,
in the white gleam of an eye catching light—
the stars pulse their call:
Return to us.

We are brief trustees of brilliance,
temporary vessels of a flame
we did not strike,
cannot keep.

One day,
when the chest quiets,
we will give back each atom,
scatter them to dark soil, to sky,
to dust adrift through things unnamed.

And somewhere,
in the cold ache of a young galaxy,
the raw gold of our bones
will vibrate into shape again.