A decade spent swallowing the knife,
not a blade of glory—
just rust and regret,
twisting slow in the gut
like a promise I never made
but still had to keep.

The only point of a pitiful night
was survival
not victory, not light,
just the bitter breath
of another hour
I didn’t ask for.

I suffocate
beneath the weight of monsters
I named after myself.
They whisper with voices
that sound too much like mine.
I am the ghost I fear
in every mirror I break.

I want to be more than I am.
Not a hero. Not a saint.
Just more.
More than this burned-out fuse,
this echo in the wires,
this skin that doesn’t fit.

My heart is a cowboy—
wild, reckless, loud.
My mind, an Indian—
wounded, wandering, proud.
They circle each other in silence,
both armed, both tired.
Neither will surrender.
Both are my enemy.

I’m in this
because of you.
You taught me the language of collapse,
taught me how to bleed without a wound.
You knocked me down
like thunder
meets a dying tree.
And now I’m trying
to grow again
in scorched soil.

But I’m under no illusion—
I cannot fly that high.
I’ve seen the sun melt wings
right off the back of hope.
So I crawl.
So I scream.
So I rise, if only
an inch at a time.

Because even ashes
remember the fire.