u/ExistentialForge

I have always distrusted shallow water
the way it quickly gives away its floor.
Have you ever seen wild urchins drifting in someone’s eyes?
Have you felt their gaze drop to the ocean bed?
Have you lived in salty clarity?

Not reducing them to the dolphin mythology,
nor fashioning them into mermaids,
but witnessing the entire ecology
between surface and depth,
and what lives inside invisibly.

The kelp forests unabashedly leaning toward a fractured ray.
Giant bodies guarding the depths from surface arrogance.
Warmth that emerges in unexpected pockets .
Saltwater freedom in floating near something capable of swallowing you whole.
The strange humility of closeness.
Becoming small beside another
and not needing to conquer it.

I have.

-Existential

It’s 7 in the morning.
The alarm goes off.
I thank god I don’t believe in.
I survived again, against my own expectations.
I bargain for five more minutes.
Eventually, I get up
and look at the sleepy eyes of my dog.
Human life is superior, I remind myself.
She goes back to sleep.
At 9, I reorganize my folders.
Every name must make sense.
Every version properly dated.
Last year I lost weeks reinventing the wheel
because I couldn’t tell one wheel from the last.
By noon, I have been let go.
The folders look perfect.
No one will touch them.

-Existential

A bell was struck

(but nothing rang back),

muted echo saturates the field.

Neither silence nor sound,

(but something in-between)

begs for answers

these senses cannot yield.

Energy wanes

through the rarefied air,

a lifelong debt

that will remain unpaid.

We leapt over the valleys

where resonances compound,

brittle air gave way

to their quiet decay.

The end is not the goal,

but the means have become it.

Void stares back

with a gaze (we cannot hold).

We tuned to frequencies

(the other couldn’t catch),

pulse after pulse,

each one lost in the ether.

.

Perhaps,

a return was never promised.

-Existential

A bell was struck

(but nothing rang back),

muted echo saturates the field.

Neither silence nor sound,

(but something in-between)

begs for answers

these senses cannot yield.

Energy wanes

through the rarefied air,

a lifelong debt

that will remain unpaid.

We leapt over the valleys

where resonances compound,

brittle air gave way

to their quiet decay.

The end is not the goal,

but the means have become it.

Void stares back

with a gaze (we cannot hold).

We tuned to frequencies

(the other couldn’t catch),

pulse after pulse,

each one lost in the ether.

.

Perhaps,

a return was never promised.

-Existential

A bell was struck

(but nothing rang back),

muted echo saturates the field.

Neither silence nor sound,

(but something in-between)

begs for answers

these senses cannot yield.

Energy wanes

through the rarefied air,

a lifelong debt

that will remain unpaid.

We leapt over the valleys

where resonances compound,

brittle air gave way

to their quiet decay.

The end is not the goal,

but the means have become it.

Void stares back

with a gaze (we cannot hold).

We tuned to frequencies

(the other couldn’t catch),

pulse after pulse,

each one lost in the ether.

.

Perhaps,

a return was never promised.

-Existential

Cadence built in the dark,

a blind-faith sprint into the unknown.

Rhythm rings like tinnitus:

will I survive this song?

They say: trust the momentum,

keep your eyes on the prize.

What powers the legs

is caged in the ribs,

confined,

yet refusing to give out.

Until the wind shifts:

just enough,

inertia halts mid-motion.

Legs tremble,

pulse rises.

Left slants right,

right forgets its direction.

Maybe if I lean into the tilt,

yield to the blur,

there’s still a quiet night

by a moonlit shoreline.

What was once ink

now runs in the veins.

Sweat bleeds in,

blood oozes out;

mercury coats the tongue.

The path once trusted

narrows to a slackline,

a thin wire in the wind,

nowhere left to run

but ahead.

-Existential

Cadence built in the dark,

a blind-faith sprint into the unknown.

Rhythm rings like tinnitus:

will I survive this song?

They say: trust the momentum,

keep your eyes on the prize.

What powers the legs

is caged in the ribs,

confined,

yet refusing to give out.

Until the wind shifts:

just enough,

inertia halts mid-motion.

Legs tremble,

pulse rises.

Left slants right,

right forgets its direction.

Maybe if I lean into the tilt,

yield to the blur,

there’s still a quiet night

by a moonlit shoreline.

What was once ink

now runs in the veins.

Sweat bleeds in,

blood oozes out;

mercury coats the tongue.

The path once trusted

narrows to a slackline,

a thin wire in the wind,

nowhere left to run

but ahead.

-Existential

String of pearls dangle

Wind-chimes sing an unheard tune

No wind moves at all

-Existential

It wasn’t mine to fix

the way we sealed wrong,

twisted shut at a slight angle.

.

Threads stripping,

wearing down

with each forced attempt.

.

My hands slip.

I turn to loosen

it tightens its grip more.

.

We hold there,

neither breaking

nor releasing.

.

Rust pilling up

eats away the rim

until the metal is a stranger.

.

I will keep my grip

until we hit the bin.

.

Next time,

I will buy pouches.

.

-Existential