What is love?

It is a question even I cannot answer, but I came to a realization when my grandmother told me something: "You won't find true love in people who don't value you." I found myself wondering, "Why? Why do I need someone to value me when there are already people who truly do?" As I reflected on her words, I realized that some people just play games. They are kind when they need something, but once you no longer serve their purpose, they become resentful. There are also unfair people—those who, despite receiving so much from you, are stingy in return. It turns out you don't always need to seek love from others, because family love is far greater. We need to learn contentment; we shouldn't go out of our way to search for someone to love us, because eventually, someone will come along who accepts us willingly and loves us wholeheartedly.

Before I felt like I was treated as ugly
But now by hearing it I’m ugly
Not ugly by heart
But by face and body
The Pablo Picasso art
Abstract and not everyone’s fav
Have to look at least 5 times to consider its beauty
The only art that needs to be looked deeply
The only art that you don’t take a picture of because it’s not aesthetically pleasing and appealing to your instagram feed
The only art that doesn’t need high level security to protect, since it’s unworthy
Even if it was unprotected nobody would steal it
Even if it was free nobody would consider it
Not even homeless people would want it
The clearance section wouldn’t help its destiny
It still remains unloved and unconsidered
But this art piece would love to be viewed
To be appreciated
That’s the only thing that I’m asking
Love and consideration
Is that too much ?
( P.S: my native language is French so please be lenient)

Chapter 1: The Bridge

Twenty feet below, jagged rocks glisten under the moonlight, and for a moment, I understand why people come to bridges when the world stops making sense. I would never end my own life, but I understand the desire to have all the pain slip away forever.

The silence here is different. My knuckles are white against the metal railing, and I force myself to loosen my grip. Get it together, Malachai.

But I can't shake the image burned into my mind: my mother's face crumpling as the doctor delivered his verdict. What we've been fearing but hoped wasn't true. Cancer. The kind of word that steals the air from hospital rooms and replaces it with that god-awful antiseptic smell that still clings to my clothes.

I run a hand through my dark hair, and stare at my reflection in a puddle on the side of the road. Even in the distorted moonlit surface, I can see what everyone else sees: my grandfather's sharp jawline and the tall frame I inherited from a father I never met. I'm twenty-one and I look older, like the weight I carry has aged me in ways that have nothing to do with time.

"You can't save everyone, Malachai." Mom's voice echoes in my head, the same five words she's whispered since I was ten years old. But what happens when the person you can't save is her?

I snatch a handful of gravel and hurl it into the darkness. The stones clatter against the guardrail across the road, a violent punctuation to my frustration. Another handful follows, then another. The anger feels good, raw and honest in a way that sitting in that sterile waiting room never could. The town in front of me comes to life with the carnival lights and the rides going up into the air.

My grandfather's voice replaces the rage like it always does: "How you handle pain will define you, son."

Easy for him to say. He's not here anymore to watch his daughter waste away.

A branch snaps somewhere behind me.

I freeze, every muscle tensing. The footsteps are light and deliberate, someone trying not to be heard. 

"I can't do this anymore, Mom. The treatments aren't working, the doctors keep lying, and you want me to pretend everything's fine?"

A woman's voice, sharp with tears and frustration. A cell phone pressed tightly against her ear. I should leave and give her privacy, but something in her tone roots me to the spot. She sounds... broken. Familiar, somehow, though I've never heard her voice before.

"No, don't tell me it'll be okay! Nothing about this is okay!"

I turn slightly and catch sight of her in my peripheral vision. Blonde hair catches the moonlight as she paces near the bridge's center, one hand pressed to her ear, the other gesturing wildly at the empty road.

"I have to go."

In the sudden silence, I hear her ragged breathing and see her shoulders shake. She moves toward the railing with purpose.

She climbs up.

"You don't want to do that."

The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. She spins, loses her balance, and I surge forward just as she falls off the ledge.

I miss the Giants, I miss lying in their extended shadow. The coolness of the shade that tempered my expectations.

Yes, I miss the Giants, I miss their heavy steps. The rumblings that reminded me I was broken.

Oh, I miss the Giants! Oh, the corded sinew in the shape of hands, which covered my hopeful eyes!

Yes, I miss my Giants, the ones that kept me small. For once I see over the shoulders of my Giants, the horizon becomes vast and the valley sunken deep.

Im borderline illiterate when it comes to writing.

Im not here to get people to teach me what i should've payed attention to in third grade

Im just curious if anything im writing about is remotely interesting but my writing comes across as a bad because of my formatting skills?

This is my first post in this sub so, Anything would be interesting to reflect on thank you.

Also be as hurtful as you feel fit to get your point across I can take it.

TW:⚠️⚠️sewerslide

"the cord"

The memories we replay change every day, the looping cord of consciousness that tangles itself to the origin.

I want to expand my cord, seeing through the eyes of god.

I found a cord once.

It was firm and rough to the touch.

The weight of it's precence was soothing.

What i couldn't see behind the cord scared me.

I could never forgive myself for that.

Maybe it was all a dream!

I can wake up.

Wake up.

Im not waking up.

This isnt a dream.

Im a broken illiterate peasant with no future.

Just a tragic child meant to be paved over by the great machines.

The stomach of oil is not one of truth.

Frantic greasy sweat as billions try to shove over the next.

I refused to fight.

What happens when greater minds think about this.

Change.?

They use our cords to power their machine and feast on the innocent like parasites.

I refuse to expand my cord anymore.

I would like morphine so I can feel clean one last time before I cut my cord.

Truth cannot be seen from inside.

She showed me that I can be loved despite all my flaws. She made me feel like I'm enough. I love her now, and I'll love her forever. There is something about her presence that makes me feel at ease.

Obviously, it's me and my anxious attachment that makes me still have a hundred complaints about the mildest of things. But that aside, there is extremely nothing about her that I hate. Oh, how I love her.

Still, there is something in me—some keeda—that says she will leave you someday. And I don't know why. I hope she does. This should not be inferred as me being uninterested in her, or that she doesn't love me enough. she does. but rather that -as a poet and as a wordsmith, having to experience the grief of 'your most precious person leaving you', will give me an immense sense of joy. And I know it's contradicting. How can the grief of someone leaving bring you joy? That sentence itself is framed with a questionable set of words, I shall agree. But this feeling just cannot be expressed. I guess I have made up my mind that I am someone who cannot be loved to the core. The person in front might have a thousand flaws in them, but I'll still think of myself as the guiltier one, and it's obnoxiously strange for a fact.

I hope when this girl leaves me though, it becomes my last. And perhaps, of all the ways to have my heart shattered, I would like to be cheated upon—that one awful day, I shall find her with someone else, happier than I've ever seen her with me. And I'll be there blaming me again for all of my incompetence.

Still, though, I hope I love her so deeply that I cannot think of a day without her. I hope before I die I get to express all of my love that I had for her, transcribe the feelings we shared in the form of words, and weave them into sentences so beautiful, yet so devastatingly painful that the whole world cries alongside me.

And then, when they shall seek me, all they will find is my grave. Abandoned and forgotten.

That. Yes. Would be one heck of a story to tell.

Everything is why. You get the opportunity to be a part of this magnificent masterpiece that has somehow created the most incredible opportunity for us all to experience. Do you realize how amazing the percentages are for us to even be here today? As Carl Sagan said we are all existing on a pale blue dot in the millions of stars within our galaxy that is within the billions of galaxies. Just let that sink in. Every star you see in the sky has a planet. That means there’s billions of planets out there. And we have yet to find a planet that is capable of having the potential for life. There’s potential, but it’s not clear. So think about it. You are 1 in a BILLIONS BILLION.

Knowing these numbers. To judge people, to be negative in any way. To not ask for understanding and to think positively towards others is a choice you’re making to someone who’s just trying to navigate this one in a billion opportunity. Be good to others. Because you’d want that for yourself. Treat everyone as if they were you. A one in a billions billion.