Fourlinegraphia

  Sweat falls into cracked lines of time, Dry earth rests upon my worn face. Yet hidden seeds of hope remain; In ash, old dreams still find their place. *** Grey hairs rise like stubborn wild grass; Still I turn the soil once more. Time spits upon my face-I plant again, Though life feels like a binding chore. *** Ancient aches within my bones, Songs of loss I cannot name. Seasons and sons taught me to bend, Yet every wound still burns the same. *** Family and fields-mere strokes of luck, When seasons bless, life takes its yield; But when time turns its face away, All turns to waste, like choking weeds. *** No cup is free from hidden poison; Such luck is rare in any life. We drink what time has mixed for us, Bitter as truth, and sharp as strife. *** Debts rise and fall through our lives; Like tides that never truly end. Like an old slave bowed by the years, Yet still I refuse to break or bend. *** A rope hangs tight ’tween love and demand; We strain like bulls that plough the land. ...

  No Season to Stay ...................................... In the ashen hush of dawn, where smoke supplants the mist, I stand-rooted in a silence no longer innocent. / I ask myself- what, in this fractured earth, still belongs to me? / Are these roots an inheritance, or a quiet sentence I was never meant to escape? / Seasons once arrived as gentle confessions- now they stagger through ruin, indistinguishable from grief. Did they ever intend to remain, or was I the one who believed in their return? / I have bloomed beneath borrowed skies, unaware they would one day burn. Was that light ever mine, or merely a fleeting mercy before the fire? / The wind no longer carries whispers- only the residue of endings. If it scatters what I am, what, then, is left of me? / Rain falls, but not to cleanse- it mingles with dust and memory. If it can blur even the ground I stand on, was this place ever certain? / When distance grows between lives, is it loss- or the only language survival understand...

Sixteen days have passed in pain, Time moves slow like endless rain. Walls still stand, but feel so bare, Since I cannot find you there. Morning comes, but feels so weak, Your soft voice I still do seek. Used to wake with gentle call, Now there’s silence in it all. In the kitchen, still and cold, Lives the warmth the past once told. Old stone mortar waits for you, Like it knows what it must do. Pestle rests; it does not sing, Missing hands that life would bring. Pressure cooker, silent, still, Has not whistled by your will. Washing stone has lost its cry, Cloths lie still and left to dry. After beats your hands once gave, Now it rests, so cold, so grave. Tap has learned to not let flow; Water waits, but does not go. Like it knows you’re not around, So it holds its silent sound. Well rope hangs; it does not cry, Pulley still-no creak, no sigh. Every corner feels this loss; Silent hearts no words can cross. Pills and syrups, lined in rows, Swallowed all the healing hopes. Bot...

  The Architect of Scars **** ***** ***** ***** **** The tree does not become shade until a burning sun stands overhead. The stars do not become guides until the night surrenders to darkness. ****  The mountain does not boast of its height until the valley is cast in its shadow. The river does not sing of its strength until it meets the stone that would stop it. ****  We are built of what we have weathered; the glass is forged in the furnace, the diamond is born of the weight that the earth refused to lift. ****  Forgiveness is a word without a voice until the wrong has been done. Patience is a ghost in the hallway until the clock refuses to strike the hour. ****  We look for the sunrise not because dawn is beautiful, but because the cold has settled in our bones. We reach for the hand not because we are weak, but because the path has grown too narrow to walk alone. ****  So let the wind howl against the timber; it is only then the roots learn to grip. Let ...

I have heard defeat arrive not as thunder- but like a snake in dry grass, hissing through slander. / When they could not touch my thought, they reached for my skin, as crows peck at ripe fruit they could never grow. / My name was held to fire like thin gold over flame, tested not for truth but for how much pain it could carry. / I have seen honor hung on women like glass bangles on trembling wrists- bright as festival light, fragile as a lie repeated too long. / And when a man stood like a mountain against the storm of lesser minds, they did not move the mountain- they poisoned the river at its feet, naming his women as weakness. / How strange this old world is: shame circles women like vultures around harvest fields, while pride wears a man’s face but hides in a woman’s wound. / I have known insults that crawled like smoke under doors, sexual words flung like mud at a temple wall, character torn as dogs worry at burial cloth. / But I have learned- when they strike the body because the...

  "Sin begins the moment I abandon what I know is right.” *************** Sin begins the moment I turn away, Not in the fall, but in the sway. No sudden break, no loud descent, Just quiet shifts of small consent. *** A thought I soften, truth I bend, A line I move to ease the end. No witness there, no voice to warn, Yet something fragile comes undone. *** I tell myself it matters less, That ease is peace, that less is rest. But deep within, a knowing stays, Unmoved by all my careful plays. *** For right was never far or dim, It lived within, it spoke within. And every step I chose to stray, Was one I felt-but turned away. *** Yet even here, the path remains, Not lost to time, nor bound in chains. For what I left, I still can find, If I turn back with steady mind. *** Not through shame, nor sudden grace, But quiet truth I choose to face. For sin may start where I depart, But so does healing- in the heart.