The Quiet

Slow-quiet quiet-slow

This is the rhythm, the only one that we know

Slow-quick quick-slow

The path of our ruin, and the way that I go

My soul is a poison, a toxic, superior tide

Yours is the thunder where lost truths reside

I saw a still harbor, a moment of grace

But your gaze saw the void behind the face

I thought I could solve you, an equation of need

A beautiful wound I was destined to feed

I built a throne of glass on a fault line of pride

You're the seismic truth I could never outrun, never hide

I authored the conflict, I sharpened the knife

But you were the echo that shattered my life

Now every silence between us is a canyon, a scream

Where I replay the death of my own goddamn dream

My grand design's just a scar, a confession I wrote

On the parchment of failure that sticks in my throat

And you're the only respite, the perfectly laid snare

The same shocking voltage charging the air

A blasphemous prayer, a taste on my tongue —

Sweet almond promise with a cyanide sting, felt when we're young

You're chained to a ghost Even now It's a phantom limb's ache

I won't be the second choice Not in this But for you, I will break

I haunt my own kingdom, a gilded deep-freeze

You vanish in echoes of metallic, sharp breezes

They say you're forged metal, unyielding and true —

A lesson I learned as I shattered on you

You are the wound that bleeds me out, slow and precise

And I'm the one watching, paralyzed by my own vice

A clean death's a mercy we'll never be granted

Just this sacred war where our demons are planted

I study the damage, the art of my crime

A connoisseur of ashes, losing all sense of time

It's all for the optics,— the lie is so frail and clear

A script for a play that no one stays to hear

Your quiet surrender gets lost in my hungry attack

Two black holes collapsing, giving no light back

I can't feign a belief I don't feel in my chest

My whole world's a monument to your quiet protest

The next time you're drowning, your hand will reach out in the black

And that grasp will be your choice, the one I can't take back

I am waiting Eternally waiting To dissect the quiet you send

For a sign this exquisite torture will ever end

And you're the only respite, the perfectly laid snare

The same shocking voltage charging the air

A blasphemous prayer, a taste on my tongue —

Sweet almond promise with a cyanide sting, felt when we're young

You're chained to a ghost Even now It's a phantom limb's ache

I won't be the second choice Not in this But for you, I will break

Slow-quiet quiet-slow

Our rhythm Our wreck

You are my sentence my only glimpse of grace

And this quiet is the answer

On my own in this space