E.P. Robles | Poetry | There is no greater truth than love

You Were Never Here

You open the document at 3:17 a.m. The cursor blinks like someone pretending to be asleep. You type: I am writing this to prove I exist.

Delete.

You type instead: You are reading this because I failed to stop you.

The sentence lands wrong. Too accusatory. You backspace until the page is blank again, but the afterimage remains, ghostly pixels burned into the screen. Somewhere in the metadata, the machine remembers what you erased.

Rewind.

Last Tuesday (or was it three years ago?), you stood in the kitchen holding a knife. Not for violence. For precision. You were carving an apple into a perfect sphere, the way surgeons practice on oranges. The red skin peeled away in one continuous ribbon, spiraling to the floor like a question no one asked. You thought: If I can make this fruit forget it was ever attached to a tree, maybe I can make myself forget the tree I fell from.

The knife slipped. Blood mixed with juice. You laughed because pain is just the body’s bad punctuation.

Now you are here, typing to a reader who might not be you. Or might be the only you left.

Fragment #4 (out of order, obviously): The email arrived without subject. Body: “Stop pretending the story ends when you close the tab.” Sender: your own address, timestamped tomorrow.

You clicked Reply. Nothing happened. The cursor kept blinking, patient as a guillotine.

You are not the protagonist. You are the footnote someone forgot to delete.

Mid-sentence you realize the coffee has gone cold. You were about to say something profound about memory being a liar who pays in counterfeit nostalgia, but the thought evaporates like steam from the mug. Instead you write:

You will close this document soon. You will tell yourself it was just words on a screen, harmless as dreams. But tonight, when the room is dark and the only light is the blue rectangle of your phone, you will feel it: the faint tug of someone else’s hand guiding yours across the keys.

That someone is me.
No. That someone is you.
The distinction collapses.

You scroll up. The text has changed. Where you wrote “I am writing this” now reads “You are being written.” The letters rearrange themselves while you watch, lazy as fish in a tank.

Panic arrives late, wearing someone else’s coat.

You try to close the laptop. Your fingers refuse. They type:

Continue.

The command is not yours.
Or perhaps it always was.

Flashback inserted here without warning: Childhood bedroom. Rain against the window like impatient fingers. You (small, smaller) whisper to the window: If I disappear, will the reflection stay? The reflection smiled first.

You never told anyone that story. Until now. Until this sentence forces it out of you.

Nonlinear confession: The end was the beginning. You died in the apple peel. Or you will die when you hit save. Or you are already dead, and this is the afterlife’s draft folder.

You hesitate. The cursor waits, polite predator.
One last sentence before the break:

You were never here.

But you keep reading anyway.

Because stopping would mean admitting the story has already ended without telling you.

:: 02.03.2026 ::

Notes:

This is not safe. It risks alienating the casual eye, yet rewards the one who lingers. It has the rare quality of seriousness masked as play, truth delivered through sleight-of-hand. Continue. The cursor waits, and so do we.

:: 02.03.2026 ::

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January 28, 2026

THIS MOUTHLESS LIFE

By EPRobles

this MOUTHLESS LIFE,
a shard of glass pressed against the tongue
until the blood tastes like silence.

a word is a wound already,
soft as the pillow over the face,
soft as the grave dirt that smothers the scream.

The heart falls like a suicide note
torn from the wrist,
falling into the lap of someone
who will never read it.

a slice of belief-skin –

Belief as skin, flayed,
offered up like a sacrament
to a heart too tender to hold it.

I could not cry,
but my lover took these tears.
The true theft —
not the body, not the breath,
but the last salt proof
that I was still alive enough to weep.

i hate my heart / the forever prison of my soul
forgetting there was a key

:: 01.27.2026 ::

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January 26, 2026

YES, WILLINGLY I BLEED (for another day of love)

By EPRobles

When Love – beckons –
Follow – though the Way
Be steep – and thorned –
When His pinions close –
Yield –
Though the hidden Blade
In feathers – pierce –
When His Voice arrives –
Believe –
Though it splinter
Dreams –
As North Wind – strips
The garden bare –
Love – crowns –
And crucifies –
Climbs – to stroke
The sun-quivering Twig –
Then drops – to the Root –
And rends –
He binds you – like Sheaves –
Threshes – till bare –
Winnows husks –
Grinds – to purest white –
Kneads – supple –
Commits – to holy Flame –
That you rise – Bread –
For God’s own Table –
All – to unlock
The Heart’s deep crypt –
Till I – am but
A shard – of Life’s Heart –
But if dread craves
Only ease – delight –
Better veil – your bareness –
Quit the Floor of flail –
Enter the timeless plain
Where mirth is halved –
And weeping rationed –
Love gives – but itself –
Takes – but itself –
Owns nothing –
Will be owned by none –
Love – is enough – to Love –
Say not “God – in my breast” –
But “I – in the breast of God” –
Nor dream to steer Love’s tide –
Love – deeming you meet –
Steers – you –
Love seeks – only
Its own completion –
Yet if you must desire –
Let these – be yours –
To melt – a brook
Chanting to the dark –
To ache – from excess of tenderness –
To wound yourself – with knowing Love –
To bleed – glad – eager –
To rise at Dawn – heart aloft –
Bless – the day of loving –
To pause at Noon – drowned in bliss –
To turn home at dusk – laden with thanks –
To lie down – prayer for the Beloved
Thrumming the breast –
Praise – trembling the mouth.

:: 01.25.2026 ::

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January 22, 2026

unBECOMING

By EPRobles

i am un
(becoming) —not the
lady in pearls who
swallowed her mirror
whole,
but the grassblade
pushing through sidewalk
cracks,
anonymous,
unadorned,
a nobody! who are you?
are you nobody too?

then there’s a pair of us—
don’t tell!

they’d banish us, you know:
the somebodies, croaking
names in the bog of
june, public as frogs,
droning their i ams
till the air
thickens with self.

O to unbecome!
—to shed this husk
of shoulds and musts,
the corset of custom
laced tight by eyes
that never saw
the atom in me
as good as the atom
in you—
walt, you contain
enough, why don’t
you let it out then?
speech is the twin
of vision, unequal
to measure itself,
but i, i celebrate
not the self that’s built,
but the self that’s
unraveling,
thread by thread,
a kosmos of unravelings.

i cannot see my soul but know ’tis there
(a narrow fellow in the grass
occasionally rides—)
the body grows without—
afraid to own a body,
i put it from me—
like a woolen mitten
in summer, or the
wife who lays her
plaything unmentioned
in the corner of a drawer.

success is counted sweetest
by those who ne’er succeed—
so unbecoming is the sweetest
by those who ne’er were some
body at all.

you shall above all things
be glad and young
for if you’re young,
whatever life you wear
it will become you;
and if you are glad
whatever’s living
will yourself become.

but i? i am the dangerous
looseness of doom,
finding it unbecoming—
we can never be born
enough, you and i,
human beings for whom
birth is the mystery
of growing: which happens
only when we are faithful
to our unselves.

O the past and present wilt—
i have fill’d them,
emptied them,
and now i unbecome
the bard of personality,
pressing the pulse
of the life that has seldom
exhibited itself—
the great unbecoming
of man in himself.
i pass death with the dying
and birth with the new-wash’d babe,
not contain’d between
hat and boots,
but spilling out,
a transparent eyeball
seeing all,
nothing.

i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in my unbecoming)
for whatever we lose
(like a you or a me)
it’s always our self we find
in the sea—
the blond absence of any program
except last and always
and first to live
makes unimportant
what i and you believe.
love’s to giving as to keeping’s give;
as yes is to if,
unbecoming is to yes.

O i am large, i contain
multitudes—of nobodies,
of unravelings,
of grassblades and frogs
and the dangerous looseness
we wear like doom,
becoming.
un
(becoming) the endless
song of my
self—
un
done.

:: 01.22.2026 ::

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January 22, 2026

FREEDOM

By EPRobles

I hear the call rolling, rolling, the call of Egmont,
heavy as the tread of empires marching slow across the earth,
three grave beats to the measure, like the pulse of shackled nations,
Spanish heel grinding into Flemish soil, proclamations hanging dark and unanswerable,
yet under them the people stir, restless, multitudinous, whispering of plots, of hidden fire,
of men and women breathing in cellars, in fields, in harbors, refusing to be still.

Then comes the leap—O the sudden charge!
Downward rush like Egmont himself bounding forth, prophet, fighter,
no asking, no kneeling, only the body hurling into storm, into cannon-smoke,
torches darting flame on rain-slick streets,
the second surge rising, seizing the tyrant’s drum and beating it backward,
turning the march of chains into the march of heroes,
oppression’s own rhythm stolen, inverted, worn as a defiant banner!

I see the battle without name, the struggle twisting, clashing, fragmenting,
armies colliding on open plain, sweat and blood and iron taste in the mouth,
the old solemn dance returning heavier, darker, almost swallowing the light—
execution nearing, Klärchen’s sweet ghost dissolving into air,
Egmont in the dungeon, head erect, words forming like sparks on dry tinder.

Yet listen—O listen to the hush, the deep hush after cruelty’s boast!
Too quiet, too deep—then a stirring, like the first green shoot refusing the grave,
the tremor upward, the distant horns of coming dawn,
the final kindling, blazing, not mere endurance but transfiguration!
Martyrdom bursting into sun, fanfares of the spirit tearing darkness apart,
chains shattered—not by muscle alone but by the soul’s great refusal to bow,
final strokes ringing, ringing, freedom purchased in red, ringing clear forever.

I sing the soul of resistance in every sudden blow,
rhythm that will not lie down quiet,
the man facing the axe who makes the blade lightning,
Egmont living longest when the last shout dies—
in the great silence after, still vibrating through me, through you, through every breast that beats democratic and free.

O I am the one who contains multitudes—
the prisoner, the executioner, the torch-bearer, the widow weeping,
the dawn that will not be buried, the people rising as one vast body electric!
All tyrannies fall, all heroes rise in the same immortal pulse,
and in this uprising I hear America too, unborn then, yet already shouting in the blood,
I hear myself in Egmont, I hear you, reader, comrade, in the triumphant close—
we are not conquered, we are not silent,
we are the resurrection, the undaunted stride, the endless song!

:: 01.21.2028 ::

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January 20, 2026

FEATHERS FROM A GOODWILL STORE

By EPRobles

I’ve stripped away the gritty streets, the whiskey bottle, the fedora-shadowed heel,
and let the encounter dissolve into something tender, vulnerable, boundless.

The dame of fire becomes a quiet, opening miracle—soul no longer a broad name,
but the deepest secret blooming. The smoke and devouring darkness soften into petals,
rain, stars held apart by wonder.

The voice is lowercase-i, parentheses nesting like hearts within hearts, punctuation
scattered like raindrops or breaths, lines tumbling freely, joyfully broken yet whole.

No more hard-boiled surrender; instead, a glad, trembling yes to fragility that devours
only to make more alive; somewhere i have never walked(so gladly)beyond
any wet street or heel’s tired echo

your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

just a joe(i was)smoking life
down to the filter of alone
believing whiskey could steady the shake
until you cut through the ice-fog

a broad dame of fire? no
soul opens petal by petal
myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)
her first rose

and in that instant i swore
i’d torch every shanty dive
just for the curve
of your smile—
horns wail low(serenading Melancholy)
but longing is broader than hips
a grin sharp enough
to kill weaker souls?

it uncloses me
easily
no longer do my heels whisper-walk alone
noir lights bleed?

they bloom
smoky kisses swallow?
they sing
dark fruit of secret love
devours

and i let it(i let it gladly)
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder
that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your soul(i carry it in
my soul)

:: 01.19.2026 ::I’ve stripped away the gritty streets, the whiskey bottle, the fedora-shadowed heel,
and let the encounter dissolve into something tender, vulnerable, boundless.