true orbit
Did you really raise me high.
To let me fall from your sky?
I thought you’d carved a place for me,
Not sharpened love to cut me free.
Day by day, the branches bled
In our hometown, burned and red.
The trees are gone, the roots are dust.
You left the world I chose to trust.
They trained me well to wear the name,
To smile and posture through the game.
The dinners, claps, the travel plans,
The knives they hide in linen laughs.
And I sit still and play the part,
A mask across a shrinking heart.
They speak in glass, they speak in gold.
I nod and laugh. My hands feel cold.
They say “You’re not like all the rest,”
A softer tone, a nicer vest.
They joke, they sneer, they drop your name
Not knowing I was shaped by shame.
My voice is wrong in every place—
Too rough, too low, too full of space.
I raise it high, I pitch it thin
So I don’t scare the room I’m in.
In Arabic it cuts like steel,
A blue flame masked in practiced zeal.
In English it just spins around,
A borrowed tone, a gentler sound.
I could take the crown and smile.
I could walk that golden aisle.
But something in me twists and breaks.
This isn’t pride, it’s all just fake.
Max rewound the storm to choose,
Chloe gone, the town still bruised.
I chose the crowd. I left the girl.
And now I haunt this perfect world.
The ghost of you in every hue—
The red, the rouge, the maroon too.
I set the mood. I strike the pose.
But some small part of me still knows.
drowsy grove
summer mesa
stiff dune
uncut fossil
south minnow
tidal dune