Love was never a heartbeat. It was the echo left behind after the heart forgot why it was still beating. It arrived wearing another person's face, its hands stitched together from promises that had already begun to rot. I welcomed it. Not because it was kind, but because loneliness knows how to mistake a wolf for warmth. Every smile it offered cast a longer shadow. Every whispered "forever" fed another ghost sleeping beneath my ribs. The thought of love is a clever liar. It builds cathedrals from broken mirrors, then asks us to kneel before our own reflections, calling the illusion destiny. How eagerly we obey. We water flowers that grow from graves, write poems to people who never truly existed, and embrace memories still unborn. Love watches. Silent. Patient. Like a spider waiting in the center of a web woven from hope. It never forces us inside. It simply lets us believe the silver threads are rays of morning light. By the time we understand, the sky has forgotten our ...
They call me crazy. I laugh and tell them, "Of course I am, sanity packed its bags years ago and left no forwarding address." They laugh with me. That is the trick. If I make the joke first, no one notices the cracks beneath the punchline. My mind is a carnival at midnight, lights flickering, music playing out of tune, ghosts riding the Ferris wheel of old memories. Yet I smile. Because laughter is cheaper than therapy and easier than explaining why some nights feel heavier than mountains. I joke about my misfortunes. I shake hands with disaster. I invite heartbreak to sit beside me at the bar and buy it a drink. "What now?" I ask. And heartbreak laughs, because it knows I will turn it into a story. That is how I survive. Not with courage. Not with strength. But with absurdity. With ridiculous thoughts that dance through the darkness wearing oversized shoes. The world expects tears. I hand it a grin instead. The world expects collapse. I perform a comedy routine on...