The Man at the Diner

It's late,
and the world disappears
beyond the rain-streaked windows.

Across the counter,
a man with leather hands
pours another cup.
Doesn't ask if I'm okay,
just slides the blue mug closer.
Steam swirls upward between us,
folding into air and vanishing.

He talks about the weather,
the road home,
how apple pie tastes better
after midnight.

I nod and fake a smile,
grateful for ordinary words,
and the way he doesn't look too closely
at what's behind my eyes.

Sometimes the smallest thing
can change a life—
like the man at the diner
who never knew
he saved a broken girl from drowning
one cold November night.

 

Proof of Life

Tonight,
I sat in the dark
and cried.

No reason.
The dam just broke.

Sometimes it's strange comfort,
this breaking—
to know I can shatter
and still bleed.

Let the tears come.
Let them remind me
I am not stone.
That I am still here,
still capable
of ruin.

And still capable
of love.

 

Theft

Deception can rot a thing
faster than air or time.
Love, when it betrays,
can steal God from your hands.

"Some wounds," the counselor said,
"just take longer to heal."

And I understood what she meant
as I touched the child's face
dissolving into the fogged mirror.

 

When November Wind Turns Cold

It starts with the air—
that first shiver of wind
threading through trees.
Leaves loosen their grip
in tired surrender,
fluttering to the ground
like broken promises.

I watch them gather
along the fence line
as the sky grows dark early.
I pull sweaters from drawers
and feel that familiar ache.

Mom asks if I'm coming
home for Christmas this year.
I say maybe,
like I always do.
She doesn't ask why.

The wind picks up.
Somewhere, a door slams hard.
My body flinches
before my mind can stop it,
and for a heartbeat,
I see him standing
in the doorway again.

And I pretend
not to hear the echo—
that dissonant chord
beneath November wind,
the sound of something breaking
and never being the same.

 

Revenant

He had many faces—
each grinning with borrowed power,
each certain the dark
would keep his secrets.

But I am the dark now.
And I keep nothing.

He mistook my silence
for submission—
forgot what grows
in buried soil,
how roots remember
every bootprint that crushed them.

Now I rise without prayer, without apology.
Baptized in the iron taste of my own blood,
I walk back into his world
like salt finding every open wound.

Not my cries for mercy this time. His.
Restoring balance
with the slow, deliberate sound
of justice breathing through gritted teeth.

Let them call it vengeance.
Let them call it sin.

I call it reckoning.

And when he speaks my name,
let it sound like thunder
dragging chains through Hell.