The Shape of What We Carry: Poems Collection No.3

I Saw a Rat in the Tube

I saw a rat in the Tube.
Not the first, not the last,
but something about this one
unraveled me.

It slipped through the tracks like a bad inheritance,
a flicker of shadow between steel and filth.
People screamed, feet recoiling,
as if fear were instinct,
as if disgust were passed down
like a family name.

The rat did not hesitate,
did not blink,
did not dare doubt the rhythm of its own terror.
It ran like it had always been running,
like its mother had run,
like its ancestors before her,
each one whispering to the next:

Go.
Do not ask.
Do not wait to see if the teeth are real.

Somewhere, generations ago,
one rat hesitated—
and never lived to pass on its blood.

So now they all run,
before the danger even has a shape,
before the teeth even show themselves.

And isn’t it the same with people?

A woman flinches before the hand is raised.
A man sharpens his voice before the silence grows thick.
A child swallows their laugh before it is called too loud.
A lover leaves first before they are left.

The chase does not need to be real
for the fear to be.

I do not know if rats dream,
but if they do,
I imagine their sleep is restless.
Their tiny bodies twitching with the echo
of something large, something fast,
something that may no longer exist
but still lingers in the dark corners of their bones.

And so we inherit the running,
the bracing, the flinching, the hunger,
the knowing without knowing why.

The train arrives. The people exhale.
The moment passes.

And still, somewhere beneath us,
the rat is running.

And so is everything
that was ever taught to fear.

I Am Tired

I am tired tonight
as I slip into my black satin sheets,
pull them over me like a closing door,
like a silence I do not owe anyone.

Tired in a way sleep does not touch,
that lingers in my spine,
presses at the back of my skull,
a weight that once felt like guilt.

I carried that guilt once.
Let it settle in my chest like a wound,
like a debt I could never pay,
like I should have done more.

I watched a man jump once.
Seventeenth floor.
He smiled at me before he fell.
Not a desperate smile—
a quiet one, a knowing one.
As if he had already left long before his body followed.
As if the fall was just a formality.

Seven inches between the edge and the air.
Seven sins pressed into his back.
Seven ways the world told him he was never enough.

Pride kept him from asking for help.
Greed made him chase things that never filled him.
Lust left him reaching for ghosts that never stayed.
Envy hollowed him out,
left him watching instead of living.
Gluttony made him swallow every lie he was told.
Wrath burned through him until there was nothing left.
And Sloth, the last to arrive,
told him to stop fighting,
to sink,
to let go.

The loud thud of his fall still rings in my head
whenever I hear a sudden noise.
A door slammed too hard.
A book dropped on the floor.
The echo of something hitting the ground
when it wasn’t supposed to.

I replayed it too many times.
Measured the space between his feet and the air,
as if knowing the number would change anything.

But I put it down.
I do not carry what is not mine anymore.

And I am tired—
but not blind.
Not weak.
Not soft in the way they want me to be.

I see through them.
The ones who test my patience,
who push just to see how much I’ll take,
who think kindness is a door I forgot to lock.

I didn’t.

My kindness is a light,
but I do not set myself on fire
to keep others warm.

Tonight, I slip into my black satin sheets,
close my eyes,
and let the world figure itself out.

They Say I Should Burn

They say I should burn.
Salt the earth behind me,
let my softness harden like cooling steel.
That kindness has made me prey,
that my hands, always open,
should learn to close into fists.

They tell me my sensitivity is my ruin,
that I feel too much,
forgive too easily,
see too much beauty
in a world built to break me.

Like the boy who claims he cannot feel.
Who wears his numbness like armor,
meets cruelty with silence,
has trained his face into something unreadable—
as if that is how survival works.

But I have watched him in the quiet,
seen his hands hesitate before they touch,
his body stiffen at tenderness,
his gaze falter when kindness
is handed to him freely.

And yet, for all his walls,
he holds the kindest eyes I have ever seen.

Eyes that do not ask to be known
but betray their own softness in the way they linger.
Eyes that carry ghosts
he will never speak of.
Eyes that belong to someone
who once felt everything all at once
and decided long ago
that feeling nothing was safer.

They say I should be like him.
Meet distance with distance,
disrespect with indifference,
jealousy with a sharp tongue.

But I cannot hate the woman who sees me as a threat
when the world has always told her
there is only room for one of us.

I cannot hate the man who disrespects me
when he was raised in a world
that taught him power is the absence of honesty.

That to survive, he had to learn
that being feared is safer than being known.

I see it everywhere—
how insecurity bleeds onto others,
how wounds turn to weapons,
how those who were once powerless
do whatever they can to make someone else feel small.

Because that is what war does.
It turns softness into something to conquer,
kindness into weakness,
vulnerability into liability,
gentleness into an open wound
that must be cauterized before it can bleed.

And so they take their hurt,
their hunger, their shame,
and wield it like a blade,
because they have been told
it is better to wound first
than to be the one who bleeds.

But I do not blame the weapon
for the war it was made for.
I do not blame the blade
for wanting to be anything but fragile.
I do not blame the wound
for trying to stop its own bleeding.

I have seen too much.
I have understood too much.

And if my softness is my weakness,
then let me be weak.
If my sensitivity is my flaw,
then let me wear it like gold.

Because I have seen those
who turn themselves to stone,
who fear love,
who sharpen their edges
until nothing can hold them without bleeding.

They say I should burn.
But I will not.
I will not let this world make me small.

Let me stay the one who still sees beauty.
Let me stay the one
who does not turn herself into a weapon.