u/ExistentialForge

Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
Mirage-like rivalries, glazed paths unknown,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Ticker pulse quickens, thriving on the flame.
Cables run like strings from fortified drones.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,

Market, spice, guns: the profit finds new frames.
Oil runs in rage through our marrow and bones,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Screens set the price before first shot is aimed.
Contracts get signed as bodies feel the stones.
Hunger strikes in stealth, slipped in borrowed names.

A nation mortgaged twice funds the same game.
Restless red rivers reach the rusty throne,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Dawn wakes to towers of ashes and shame.
The past reloads its arms for age alone.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

-Existential

Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
Mirage-like rivalries, glazed paths unknown,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Ticker pulse quickens, thriving on the flame.
Cables run like strings from fortified drones.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,

Market, spice, guns: the profit finds new frames.
Oil runs in rage through our marrow and bones,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Screens set the price before first shot is aimed.
Contracts get signed as bodies feel the stones.
Hunger strikes in stealth, slipped in borrowed names.

A nation mortgaged twice funds the same game.
Restless red rivers reach the rusty throne,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Dawn wakes to towers of ashes and shame.
The past reloads its arms for age alone.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

-Existential

Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
Mirage-like rivalries, glazed paths unknown,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Ticker pulse quickens, thriving on the flame.
Cables run like strings from fortified drones.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,

Market, spice, guns: the profit finds new frames.
Oil runs in rage through our marrow and bones,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Screens set the price before first shot is aimed.
Contracts get signed as bodies feel the stones.
Hunger strikes in stealth, slipped in borrowed names.

A nation mortgaged twice funds the same game.
Restless red rivers reach the rusty throne,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

Dawn wakes to towers of ashes and shame.
The past reloads its arms for age alone.
Hunger strikes again, slipped in borrowed names,
as we dance our rites on haggard remains.

-Existential

Fellow wanderer, I feel your presence.
Olfactory sensation of kindredness,
wake up with the rain.

As monsoon erases our prints,
our souls drift through the wind,
and green scent rises from the earth.

We’ve teetered so long on the precipice,
where the depths have deceived us,
and somewhere
Bob keeps repeating One Love,
passing us the joint
until we remember his chorus.

What strange road conjured you from my dream?

Chaotic thoughts dissipate into smoke,
our fingers pluck the same string
never rehearsing the tune.

What a restless journey this is.

By dawn, the earth flirts with another monsoon.
Does it remember
its affair with the one before?

Today, we mend our fractures.
Tomorrow, we rupture the whole,
before the road calls our names once more.

-Existential

Fellow wanderer, I feel your presence.
Olfactory sensation of kindredness,
wake up with the rain.

As monsoon erases our prints,
our souls drift through the wind,
and green scent rises from the earth.

We’ve teetered so long on the precipice,
where the depths have deceived us,
and somewhere
Bob keeps repeating One Love,
passing us the joint
until we remember his chorus.

What strange road conjured you from my dream?

Chaotic thoughts dissipate into smoke,
our fingers pluck the same string
never rehearsing the tune.

What a restless journey this is.

By dawn, the earth flirts with another monsoon.
Does it remember
its affair with the one before?

Today, we mend our fractures.
Tomorrow, we rupture the whole,
before the road calls our names once more.

-Existential

Fellow wanderer, I feel your presence.
Olfactory sensation of kindredness,
wake up with the rain.

As monsoon erases our prints,
our souls drift through the wind,
and green scent rises from the earth.

We’ve teetered so long on the precipice,
where the depths have deceived us,
and somewhere
Bob keeps repeating One Love,
passing us the joint
until we remember his chorus.

What strange road conjured you from my dream?

Chaotic thoughts dissipate into smoke,
our fingers pluck the same string
never rehearsing the tune.

What a restless journey this is.

By dawn, the earth flirts with another monsoon.
Does it remember
its affair with the one before?

Today, we mend our fractures.
Tomorrow, we rupture the whole,
before the road calls our names once more.

-Existential

Fellow wanderer, I feel your presence.
Olfactory sensation of kindredness,
wake up with the rain.

As monsoon erases our prints,
our souls drift through the wind,
and green scent rises from the earth.

We’ve teetered so long on the precipice,
where the depths have deceived us,
and somewhere
Bob keeps repeating One Love,
passing us the joint
until we remember his chorus.

What strange road conjured you from my dream?

Chaotic thoughts dissipate into smoke,
our fingers pluck the same string
never rehearsing the tune.

What a restless journey this is.

By dawn, the earth flirts with another monsoon.
Does it remember
its affair with the one before?

Today, we mend our fractures.
Tomorrow, we rupture the whole,
before the road calls our names once more.

-Existential

Tied a knot around my heart with your name
I did not know what the naming was worth
The ashes remain just as warm as flame
My skin remembers the heat without hearth

For tangled reasons that I cannot say
Grief stays hidden in the palms of our hands
Memories resist its quiet decay
Fists tighten around what leaving demands

Some forests die as seeds before they’re known
Yet a rare few rest in their patient shade
We grew in dark and called the dark our home
Turning flames to ashes before we fade

The knot is taut though neither claimed the thread
We named it nothing but nothing stays dead

-Existential

Tied a knot around my heart with your name
I did not know what the naming was worth
The ashes remain just as warm as flame
My skin remembers the heat without hearth

For tangled reasons that I cannot say
Grief stays hidden in the palms of our hands
Memories resist its quiet decay
Fists tighten around what leaving demands

Some forests die as seeds before they’re known
Yet a rare few rest in their patient shade
We grew in dark and called the dark our home
Turning flames to ashes before we fade

The knot is taut though neither claimed the thread
We named it nothing but nothing stays dead

-Existential

Tied a knot around my heart with your name
I did not know what the naming was worth
The ashes remain just as warm as flame
My skin remembers the heat without hearth

For tangled reasons that I cannot say
Grief stays hidden in the palms of our hands
Memories resist its quiet decay
Fists tighten around what leaving demands

Some forests die as seeds before they’re known
Yet a rare few rest in their patient shade
We grew in dark and called the dark our home
Turning flames to ashes before we fade

The knot is taut though neither claimed the thread
We named it nothing but nothing stays dead

-Existential

Tied a knot around my heart with your name
I did not know what the naming was worth
The ashes remain just as warm as flame
My skin remembers the heat without hearth

For tangled reasons that I cannot say
Grief stays hidden in the palms of our hands
Memories resist its quiet decay
Fists tighten around what leaving demands

Some forests die as seeds before they’re known
Yet a rare few rest in their patient shade
We grew in dark and called the dark our home
Turning flames to ashes before we fade

The knot is taut though neither claimed the thread
We named it nothing but nothing stays dead

-Existential

You arrive
like sprinkler mist
drifting across a yard,
finding skin
that had forgotten
relief

in mid-July.

The coolness reaches
the spine,
a brief jolt of knowing.

Even before
the water dries,
the body is counting
what remains.

At least the grass
has longer memory.

-Existential

You arrive
like sprinkler mist
drifting across a yard,
finding skin
that had forgotten
relief

in mid-July.

The coolness reaches
the spine,
a brief jolt of knowing.

Even before
the water dries,
the body is counting
what remains.

At least the grass
has longer memory.

-Existential

You arrive
like sprinkler mist
drifting across a yard,
finding skin
that had forgotten
relief

in mid-July.

The coolness reaches
the spine,
a brief jolt of knowing.

Even before
the water dries,
the body is counting
what remains.

At least the grass
has longer memory.

-Existential

You arrive
like sprinkler mist
drifting across a yard,
finding skin
that had forgotten
relief

in mid-July.

The coolness reaches
the spine,
a brief jolt of knowing.

Even before
the water dries,
the body is counting
what remains.

At least the grass
has longer memory.

-Existential

Some people have mastered the art of hyper independence. They ask for very little from others. Not because they are trying to be humble or selfless, but because they do not know any other way to exist. Experience has taught them that asking costs, in one shape or another.

They become the reliable ones, the thoughtful ones, the people who remember birthdays, check in after funerals, ask if they can help clean up. Consistently. So quietly that you only notice when they stop giving. People call them sweet and kind until one day they crumple under the weight of their own invention.

What often goes unnoticed is how much of that kindness was forged in deprivation. Affection, perhaps, once arrived unpredictably or took shapes that demanded more from them than they could offer. They learned to stretch it for as long as they could. They learned to expect little. They learned not to perpetuate the disappointment.

A delayed reply becomes proof that someone was thinking of them after all. Far better than those who never reached back. A compliment lasts for months, looping through their mind. A gift feels like something only they owe you instead of a normal part of friendship.

They become a scavenger of evidence, a collector of scraps.

They do not have a few reliable relationships. They have many close ones and yet, when they close their eyes and think of who they would call when everything falls apart, the answer returns void.

They get called needy consistently, as if it sticks out like a collarbone on their body. And yet, needs are exactly what they have struggled to have met. Anytime, they went against their own grain, and asked anyway, it has been met with anger, and worse even, with indifference.

They have spent years making meals out of crumbs so much so that you might still be mistaken that they must really love crumbs.

The habit follows them into their adulthood.
They are grateful for things others consider given. Some people notice their low-maintenance nature and even praise them for it without realizing it was built from adaptation. They become easy to love because so little is required. They become easy to overlook for the same reason too.

The cruel part is that eventually the scarcity is gone, but the foraging remains.
Someone offers a feast and they still search the floor for crumbs like your favorite dog. They still feel compelled to earn what is already being given.

And the saddest part is that they are the ones perpetuating the cycle.

They could choose differently. They could stop accepting what leaves them hungry. They could walk toward abundance instead of rationing affection. But the body remembers old economies long after the famine ends.

-Existential