Before the future started asking for terms, there was just time.

Long afternoons that did not need a reason.
Cartoons bleeding into infomercials.
The TV on, not because you were watching closely, but because it felt like company.

We went places without calling them outings.
The zoo. The museum. Sometimes just outside.

Walking was the point.
Looking was the point.
Not knowing what you were about to find was the point.

Back then, the world was something you moved through, not something you optimized.

I remember learning how to ride a bike.

My mom running alongside me, one hand on the seat, one eye on my balance. I kept saying I couldn’t do it. Not dramatically. Just flat. Like a fact.

I can’t do it.

She didn’t argue. She didn’t explain. She didn’t rescue me from the feeling.

She just told me to say it differently.

Say you can.

I said I can’t.
She said say you can.

Again and again.

Not to motivate me.
Because she already knew something I hadn’t caught up to yet.

I was confusing fear for truth.

She did that a lot.

Anytime I said I can’t. Anytime I got frustrated. Anytime I got overwhelmed and tried to end the moment with a sentence that sounded final.

She would interrupt it.

Say you can.

Not encouragement. Correction.

At some point, I stopped insisting. I said it out loud.

I can do it.

And then I did.

That sentence stayed with me longer than the bike ever did.

There was a time when effort felt like proof instead of risk. When trying didn’t feel like exposure. When failing didn’t feel like evidence.

You walked into things assuming your body would figure it out. That your balance would show up. That momentum was trustworthy.

Somewhere along the way, that changed.

You learned to qualify statements.
To soften certainty.
To say probably, maybe, we’ll see.

You learned which versions of confidence were acceptable.
Which ones needed explanation.
Which ones made people uncomfortable.

You learned when to stop saying things out loud.

That’s where Jumper by Third Eye Blind starts to sound different.

“I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.”

It was never just about the edge.

It was about the sentence someone says right before they decide they can’t.

The quiet one.
The reasonable one.
The one that sounds like self-awareness but is really withdrawal.

You don’t jump all at once.

You step back from yourself first.

Memory doesn’t drag you backward.

It just shows you something you stopped using.

There was a time when trust came before proof.

Before negotiations.
Before silence.
Before you learned how expensive belief could get.

I don’t know when you stopped saying I can.

I just know you didn’t lose the ability.

You learned when not to use it.

And that’s what comes back later.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.

Just a quiet interruption in the middle of a sentence you’ve been repeating for years.

I can’t—

Say it differently.

Say you can.

And notice what happens in your body when you don’t argue with it yet

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// Scorpio Veil

Unnoticed Costs. Part II

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I’m elbow deep in the mess of it.
Another Outlook invite drops like a slap across the face.

No subject line.
No warning.
Just that sterile little ping reminding me I don’t belong to myself anymore.

I tell them I’m burning out.
That I’m tired in a way sleep can’t fix.
That I’m starting to forget things. Little things. Scary things.

Where I put my keys.
What day it is.
Whether I actually said the words out loud or just screamed them in my head.

I tell them I feel like I’m dissolving.
That I need to slow down.
To catch my breath before it leaves me.
Before I vanish.

Instead of offering a hand,
they hand me more.

More projects.
More pressure.
More impossible expectations dressed up as quick wins.

Like if they keep me spinning fast enough
I won’t see the door behind me.
Won’t notice the lock.
Won’t remember I ever wanted to leave.

So I sit there. Eyes glassy. Skin twitching.
Believe by Cher crackling through my AirPods like a joke the universe refuses to retire.

Do you believe in life after corporate.
Do you believe in life after watching your dreams pack their shit and walk out the back door while you nod through another sync with a manager who doesn’t remember your last name.

I feel like a mechanic with both hands full.
Grease up to my wrists. Fingers cramping.
Still fixing a machine no one wants to maintain but everyone expects to run perfectly.

They throw another wrench.

When I don’t catch it.
When I flinch.
When I break pace.
They tilt their heads.

Confused.
Disappointed.

Like I used to be better.
Like I used to hold it all.
Like I was supposed to be superhuman.

Like I always have been.

No one asks what it costs.

No one sees my cat pacing by the door,
waiting for the version of me who used to toss the string toy after dinner.

No one sees the laundry colonizing my apartment.
The dishes curdling in the sink.
The way I brush my teeth in silence because music would make me feel something.

No one notices I haven’t eaten a real meal in four days.
That I’ve been living on caffeine, crumbs, and shame.

When I lie down, I don’t rest.
I disassociate under the weight of my own failure.

The thoughts circle like vultures.

You’re weak.
You’re wasting it.
You used to be magic.
Now you’re a ghost with a job title.

They don’t see me staring at the screen until the words blur.
Until the cursor mocks me.
Until my heart thuds in my ears like maybe today I finally break loud enough for someone to notice.

It’s not a lack of strength.
It’s the weaponization of it.

They see I can hold it all.
So they give me it all.

If I don’t complain, I’m fine.
If I smile, I’m good.
If I deliver, I’m okay.

When I say I’m drowning,
they act surprised.
Like I betrayed the image they painted of me.

And slowly, I disappear.

Not in flames.
Not in a dramatic exit.

In quiet, invisible pieces.

Slack status still green.
Smile still polite.
Spirit rotting behind a glowing rectangle.

Cher keeps singing.
I really don’t think you’re strong enough.

For the first time, it doesn’t feel like an insult.
It feels like permission.

Because maybe strength isn’t swallowing it all.

Maybe it’s not about how many plates you can keep spinning.

Maybe strength is saying
fuck this.

Maybe it’s setting the wrench down
even if your hands are trembling.

Letting it fall.
Letting it crash.
Letting them hear it.

Loud.
Final.
Unapologetic.

Then walking out.

Not because you’re broken.
Because you’re awake.

The match has been in your pocket the whole time.

The fire they feared is already lit.

The only thing left
is to walk through it.

// Scorpio Veil

This isn’t burnout.
It’s the moment you stop apologizing for surviving.

The sound of the wrench hitting the floor.
The silence after.
The footsteps toward the door.

And the soft thud of your cat jumping off the windowsill,
ready to follow you back to your life.

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We went to Hungary so my grandfather could die where he was born.
That’s not how anyone phrased it, but that’s what it was.
A quiet exodus. A return. A man folding himself into the soil he came from.

He was a man who knew everyone.
Like, everyone.
The kind of man whose cell phone rang so often it felt like part of his pulse.
One of the first people I knew to have one. Back when they were still bricks, still miracles.
He talked to friends like they were family and to strangers like they were friends.
If he had your number, you had a piece of him.

And before we left, he called them all.
One by one.
Or maybe all at once, like men of his generation do.
With stoic hugs, long silences, and sentences that meant more in the pauses between words than in the words themselves.
I didn’t understand any of it at the time.
I thought we were going on a trip.
I didn’t know I was following someone to the edge of their life.

He tried to teach me Hungarian before we left.
Three weeks.
Quick lessons over breakfast. Repetitions in the car.
Words that sat sharp in my mouth, pebbles I couldn’t quite swallow.
I retained only the numbers. And one phrase.

“Nem tudom.”
I don’t know.

That night, in the bathhouse, I sat across from him for the last time.
Ancient steam rising around us like the breath of the dead.
Stone archways older than memory.
His face still, like he was finally home in his own bones.
I was watching the people, the mosaic tiles, the sky through the cracked dome.
He was watching me, with the look of a man who’d already let go.

He didn’t say much.
Just enough.
The last words I’d ever hear from him.

He died the next morning.
At the train station.
Collapsed with his suitcase in hand, like his body waited until he was done carrying everyone else’s goodbyes.
We were supposed to board a train to Vienna.

Instead, I was suddenly in charge.
A boy becoming something else.
I didn’t have a phone. Didn’t think to use his.
Just stood at the post office, shaking, trying to remember any number that might connect me to someone.
The woman at the desk spoke Hungarian. I didn’t.
All I could say was “Nem tudom.”
Over. And over.
I didn’t know how to explain what had just happened.
Didn’t know the words for death. Or help.
Didn’t know how to be alone with it.

I spent the rest of the trip in silence.
Living with family I didn’t know.
Sleeping in a house full of strangers who shared my blood but not my language.
We watched TV together like it meant something.
Shrek, in Hungarian.
I remember laughing, briefly, until the news interrupted.
A train had crashed. The Vienna line.
The one we were supposed to be on.

People died.

And I didn’t know what to feel.
Didn’t know why we were spared.
Didn’t know what to do with all that survival.

I flew back with a casket.
Sat next to it like a bodyguard for a ghost.
Watched as his phone stopped ringing.
For the first time in my life, it was quiet.

Hungary tastes like grief and sparkling water.
And to this day, the bubbles still catch in my throat.
Like I’m drowning in something no one else can see.

And “I don’t know” still lingers on my tongue.
Not because I’m confused.
Not because I don’t have the answer.

But because it’s what I say when I don’t want to talk about it.
When someone asks a question that lands too close to the wound.
When I feel that boy again, alone in a bathhouse, trying to memorize the way someone looked when they let go of this world.

“Nem tudom.”
I don’t know.
I say it now the same way he did.

As a goodbye.
As a shield.
As the final word you speak when you’ve already said everything else.

// Scorpio Veil

For the ones who watched someone they loved finish their last chapter in silence.
For the ones who stayed behind to carry the weight.
For the ones who still don’t know, because they can’t say it without breaking.

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There you are again,
folded between the hours,
not quite morning, not quite night,
hair undone, mood undone,
wondering if the world ever really saw you.

It did.
I do.

I see the way you vanish just before you break.
The way your eyes still dare to glow
even when your lips forget how to ask for softness.
And when you curse your body,
for bleeding, for aching, for needing more than it’s given,
I bless it.
Every inch.
Every swell.
Every sigh you think is too much.

They praised your beauty in passing.
You’ve been admired.
But never read like scripture.

Most men want your body.
I wanted your silence,
your unraveling.

These aren’t just words.
They’re a confession dressed in velvet.
But I listen differently.

You are the kind of woman
who slows time in silk robes.
The kind whose laughter makes seasons turn early.
The kind who blushes when she’s angry,
and moans when she’s healing,
without meaning to.

So, if today hurt,
if the mirror was unkind,
if your jeans didn’t fit and your friends forgot to ask,
read this again.
If your blood made you feel hollow,
if your cravings made you feel crazy,
if you missed a version of yourself you used to be,
read this again.

Because you’re not falling apart.
You’re being remade.

You are the moon pulling oceans
and the velvet dusk before first frost.
You are the scent of cardamom in warm milk,
the press of thighs in candlelight.
You are not late.
You are not too much.
You are not wrong.

You are exactly the storm I’d beg to drown in.

And when you feel ugly,
know this.
The things you hate about yourself
are the very parts I would trace first.
Slowly.
Without rush.
With lips tuned to reverence.

You are art no one ever finished.
A song with a secret chord.
A body that deserves champagne after crying,
and kisses that don’t ask you to explain your sadness.

I want you spoiled.
I want you fed.
I want you wrecked and radiant,
laughing while the tears still cling to your lashes.

I want to make you breakfast in the late afternoon
because you were too busy coming all morning
to get out of bed.

But more than that,
I want to be your place.
The one you return to
when the world forgets
how rare you are.

Let this be your silk lined letter.
Your private indulgence.
Your proof that someone, somewhere,
knows.

You are a storm worth worshipping.
A temple with velvet walls.
A flame I’d gladly burn for.

So curl up with this when it’s cold.
Bleed with it.
Laugh with it.
Let it ruin you a little.

And know,
this is yours.
Always was.
Always will be.

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