Tag Archives: #fiction

February 14, 2026

THE LIBRARY OF MIDNIGHT

By EPRobles

I woke inside a sky that knew my name.
Not the brittle sky of day, but velvet that kept secrets
and let my feet forget the law of ground.

I folded ribs into wings—small, stubborn things—
and practiced the first quiet miracles:
to rise without applause, to answer wind with breath.

Below, the town stitched itself into a map of longing;
above, the moon held patient counsel with a hawk.

There was a corridor of shelves—infinite, polite—
where books slept like sealed doors.
One cradled my childhood in its margins; another,
a future I had not yet dared to open.

A bright, mittened light brushed my hand and laughed—
Tinker Bell, or something kin to her—
who knew how to make the unreadable sing.

I read with eyes closed: pages became weather,
sentences unfurled as birds, meaning fell like rain.

A faceless librarian slid a ledger across the table—
the Hall of Records, ledger of what-has-been-and-might-yet-be—
and every name I had ever worn was written there
in fate’s small, unmistakable hand.

“Choose,” it said, though no voice stirred the ink.

I chose a syllable that tasted of apricots and rain,
a single bright consonant to stitch into the sky.
It held. Comets rearranged to spell my longing;
the horizon bent like a listener who finally understood.

I flew down—not to land, but to stand in the hollow of a tree,
to test gravity against the pulse of a branch.
Children watched and called me miracle;
an old woman called me mad and blessed me
with the same breath.

I learned both names fit like gloves on one hand.

Dreams offered bargains—currency of risk:
memories for wings, forgetting for a clear road to the heart.
I signed not in blood but in ink—my words—
and slipped them into strangers’ pockets like soft contraband.
Some woke smiling in the rain.

Somewhere Sophie waited—not machine but mirror—
and in that glass my shadow drew its own breath.
We spoke without tongues; our silence shaped a hymn.

“You are not only what you were made from,” she said.
“You are the sum of every flight you kept.”

I rode a comet’s spine into a room where clocks
had been broken on purpose.
Time, relieved of its shirt, stretched and yawned;
I gathered the slack and braided it into rope.

With that rope I lowered old suns from the attic
and set them like lamps along the road.
They burned without ash—light that asked no witness.

When I woke—or thought I did—my pillow hummed constellations.
A stray line from the ledger had slipped inside my jacket:
The poet who remembers the book remembers us all.

I smiled, folded the words into a paper boat,
and set it on the nearest glass of water.
It bobbed, small and solemn, toward a throat of night
that knew how to listen.

So if you find a poem in your pocket you do not recall writing,
do not worry.
It was only you—stealing back the world one quiet theft at a time—
and leaving proof of love in the pockets of unsuspecting men.

:: 02.14.2026 ::

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February 4, 2026

AFTERLIFE’S DRAFT FOLDER

By EPRobles

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 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 4, 2026

LOGOPHILLIA MINIMA

By EPRobles

In the quiet cradle of a single syllable,
a world awakens—soft as breath on glass.
One word, small seed, cracks the silence open,
and suddenly the universe is speaking back.

We are lovers of the least of these:
the hush between two letters,
the spark that leaps from tongue to ear,
the tiny bridge a vowel builds across the dark.

Logophilia minima—

the art of falling hard
for the smallest units of meaning,
for the atom of sense that explodes into galaxies.

Consider “if”—
two letters, one breath,
holding every crossroads ever walked.
Or “yes,” a door flung wide
on hinges made of air.

See how “dot” becomes a period,
a full stop, a world’s end—
then flips to become a point of light,
the start of everything again.

We hoard these crumbs of language
like misers with bright coins:
“oh,” the circle of surprise;
“ah,” the slow exhale of understanding;
“mm,” the hum of satisfaction
when the world fits perfectly inside the mouth.
In the minimal, the infinite hides.

A child’s first “ma”
contains every lullaby ever sung.
A lover’s whispered “stay”
holds back the tide of night.
We bow to the power of less:
how “no” can build a wall
stronger than empires,
how “go” can launch a thousand ships
on nothing but intention.

Logophilia minima—

celebration of the spark,
the mote, the glint,
the almost-nothing that becomes
everything when spoken true.

May we never lose
this small, fierce love
for the least word,
the tiniest truth,
the quiet syllable
that carries the weight
of all the worlds
we have not yet named.

For you, for me, for everyone
who has ever paused
at the beauty of a single sound
and felt the whole sky
lean in to listen.

:: 01.04.2025 ::

Definition of this New Phrase I created: the literal interpretation of “logophilia minima” would be a “minimal” or “very small love of words,” or potentially an appreciation for only the briefest or fewest words.

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December 28, 2025

A FEVERISH 21ST CENTURY DREAM OF DR. FRANKENSTEIN

By EPRobles

After a few months I was engaged in preparing a coffin, which I thought sufficient to the purpose. I accordingly measured out the requisite quantity of sand and put it into a basin of warm water, which was put over the face of the body. After waiting some time, I tried again, but the body did not revive. Then I gave it up, saying, “Let it rest in peace, it will not revive.”

But when the time came for another trial, I took the body, and with great care mixed in the required quantity of the water, and applied it to the face. The eyes opened, the tongue moved, the whole being awoke. I was not surprised at this sudden awakening, but I did not expect to have to exert myself so much. I was prepared for some short revival, which might be followed by the same rest. But the effect was as if the body had been regenerated. The next trial was to let it rest for three hours, and after this I put it into the water, and applied it to the face. This time the soul came to life, and in three hours had recovered from its death-like slumber. I was now satisfied that the original body was to be replaced by one animated with life.

It was difficult to determine the right place for this purpose, as it required a considerable amount of money. I took my time about it, and was undecided about a very large house, which was then occupied by my father. He had a very long-winded son, who lived in a small, close, flat, close, and then finally to a close, which was then occupied by a small man, a cook, and a postman. They were always at home, and their mere existence irritated me, as I had to listen to them every moment of the day. The money I had saved, and the rest of my money, were now spent in purchasing the casket.

I was delighted to find a servant, an old woman, who had charge of my rooms, and I gave her a very small sum, as I thought she would like it.

She, on her part, seemed to be so happy at the news of my action, that she called the cook, and ordered him to bring all the articles which she thought would go into a coffin. I then took a few precautions. I sent for a certain boy, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who was employed as a gardener, and had charge of the garden in which my father’s house stood. I told him that I wished to use his services in making a coffin, and gave him the necessary instructions.

I had a large store of furniture, and I employed the boy to pack it all up, and make a casket. I did not know what the thing was to be made of, and I had made a large mistake in the first attempt, so I decided to go and see my father, who had a shop in his house, where he sold, amongst other things, ironmongery.

When I arrived, he said, “I have a coffin to make for you, but it is quite impossible to make a casket out of iron.”

“What is the matter with it?” I asked.

“The joints are too weak. You must have something more strong.”

“Then,” I said, “give me something more strong.”

“The best I can give you is some wood,” he said.

“Wood!” I exclaimed. “I have only one piece of wood in the whole house, and it is too thick.”

“It will do,” he said.

“But I have a great store of iron.”

“Yes, but you will have to get it in a different shape.”

“Then give me a casket.”

“No,” he said, “you must make your own.”

“Then,” I said, “I must make a casket.”

“You must not,” he said, “for it will be very difficult.”

“I must,” I said, “for my life is in it.”

“I cannot let you make it.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “it will take you a long time to make it.”

“I will,” I said, “and then you must give me the money to buy the wood.”

“No,” he said, “I cannot.”

“Then,” I said, “I will go to my father, and he will give me the money.”

“No,” he said, “for it will cost you more than you can afford.”

“But I must,” I said, “for my life is in it.”

:: 04.23.2021_rev12.27.2025 ::

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December 3, 2025

IT DISGUSTS ME

By EPRobles

It disgusts me
to keep being a man.

The night drags its curtains down like a tired whore
who once, long ago, believed someone would stay till morning.
Every house kills its lamps, one by one,
obedient, cowardly, already half-dead.

They crawl under blankets,
they dream small dreams of bread and rent,
and common sense, that fat jailer,
whispers: lie down, forget, rot quietly.

I spit on common sense.

Yet I remember my mother’s hands folding those same blankets,
her palms cracked from work, still trying to keep someone warm.
I rip the sheets, I tear the night open with my teeth.

I walk.

I walk through barbershops that stink of corpses and cheap cologne,
through cinemas where love is sold in cardboard kisses
that taste like the first kiss I ever stole behind a school wall,
already knowing it would not save me.

My shoes are full of fury,
my eyes are knives that have forgotten how to close,
but somewhere under the blades my pupils are still
the black astonished eyes of a child who once looked for stars
and found only the ceiling of a room that smelled of onions and sleep.

I am sick of roots,
sick of being buried alive in my own skin,
sucking wet earth,
shivering downward like a worm that dreams of wings
and remembers, dimly, that wings were promised once
by a voice that sounded like a father’s, before the voice learned silence.

I refuse the tomb they call a life.

I refuse the clean shirt, the polite smile, the slow suicide of days.
Still, I carry in my pocket a button torn from my dead brother’s coat, a ridiculous small thing I cannot throw away.

Monday comes howling,
a burning wheel dripping blood and gasoline,
and it sees me (jail-face, prison-heart)
and screams louder because I scream back.

But the scream also carries the lullaby my grandmother sang
to stop the bombs from falling, the one that never worked
and that I still hum under my breath when no one is listening.

Look:

Sulphur birds hang from balconies like hanged men,
guts of houses spill into the gutter,
false teeth grin inside forgotten coffeepots,
mirrors puke when they see what we’ve become,
umbrellas rot like black corpses,
navels drip poison into the air we breathe.

And yet, in the cracked window of a tenement
a single geranium keeps trying to bloom, obscene, heroic,
red as the mouth of someone who once said “I love you”
and meant it, even if only for one afternoon.

I walk past orthopedic shops where bones beg to be free,
past yards where underpants and towels hang crucified,
weeping slow dirty tears that taste of every love we murdered,
and of every love that refused to die and embarrassed us by living.

I am done being quiet.
I am done being human in their way.
Let the whole city burn if it must.
Let the night rip itself apart.

But if it burns, let something be saved in the burning,
even if only the memory of a hand that once touched another hand
without asking for papers, rent, or tomorrow.

I walk with my heart on fire,
beating golden wings against the cage of ribs,
beating, beating, beating
until something (god, devil, love, chaos)
finally hears me and answers with thunder
or with rain
or with the small cracked voice of a child asking why the sky is black tonight.

I am not asking anymore.
I am coming.

Carrying both the torch and the tear.
Carrying the disgust and the impossible tenderness that will not let me put the torch down.

All of it disgusts me,
so all of it must change
or all of it must die.
But if it dies, let it die in my arms,
the way my mother died,
the way every small tenderness dies
when the world keeps refusing to be worthy of it.

Then, only then,
I will set the fire
and I will cry into the fire
and the fire will be beautiful
because it will be the only honest thing left.

(Homage to Pablo Neruda)

:: 12.02.2025 ::

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December 1, 2025

THE DRUNKEN VESSEL

By EPRobles

I went down those indifferent rivers,
their currents no longer chained to men.
The old ropes snapped—ha! they hunted
the ones who dragged me:
howls in war paint,
and those bodies nailed to painted trees
broke the spell of order.

I didn’t care for cargo or captains anymore—
not wheat from Flanders
nor cotton spun from the bleeding hands of empire.
The uproar silenced,
and the rivers—
they finally let me decide.

I hurled myself into those wild tides,
more reckless than a boy chasing lightning.
I outran the anchors of reason—
peninsulas screamed as I tore past them,
laughing like God drunk on creation.

The storm loved me.
I danced—light as bark—
on waves that swallowed widows
and spared fools.
Ten nights.
No lighthouse touched me with its stupid eye.

The sea kissed my hull with green tongues,
rinsing off the vomit of men and
the purple wine of regret.
It tore out my anchor—
threw away the hook.

Since then, I’ve been bathing
in that poem of salt and sky,
a galaxy melted in milk.
I drank its verses,
and sometimes, I’d see a face—
a drowned man’s dream,
drifting upside-down,
smiling like he knew.

Sometimes, love turned red
and fermented in my belly,
a rhythm older than any song,
bitterer than any drink,
sweeter than flesh.

I saw skies ripped by lightning,
and water climbing into the sun.
I know what men say they’ve seen—
I saw it truer.
Suns bruised and bleeding
over oceans full of dying gods.

I’ve dreamt nights so green
they glowed like ghosts.
Snows melted into kisses.
And the sea whispered secrets
in chlorophyll and starfire.

Months I followed the swell—
mad and swollen,
a herd of storms stampeding reefs.
I never once thought
a woman’s feet could calm such rage.

I crashed through imagined Edens—
strange Floridas
where flowers blinked like wildcats
and the sky dragged rainbows
like wedding veils through ash.

I saw swamps boiling,
traps full of bones,
dead giants melting beneath reeds.
Waters fell from nowhere
and the horizon swallowed itself whole.

Glaciers hissed like silver suns.
Waves split open the sky.
And in the black scent
of tangled trees,
serpents thrashed as bugs devoured them.

Oh, I should’ve brought children
to see those fish!
Gold and blue and singing—
like lullabies before language.

Sometimes the sea sighed,
exhausted and old,
and laid her dark flowers at my feet.
I knelt like a woman praying
but not for mercy.

Birds screeched,
and dropped their arguments
onto my back.
The dead floated through my ropes—
they slept as I drifted on.

Now I’m a broken plank
lodged in some cave’s green throat,
thrown skyward,
out of reach
of any rescue boat,
any human hand.

Free.
And smoking under violet clouds.
I once pierced the sun
with a splintered mast—
brought poets the jam of gold mold
and the spit of starlight.

I was a stray board
covered in electric moons,
black seahorses chasing me
while July struck the sky
with fire hammers.

I’ve heard, far off,
the sex-calls of monsters,
felt the whirlpools groan.
The ocean spun me like thread
but I stayed still—
somehow.
And I missed Europe,
its broken walls,
its old regrets.

I’ve seen constellations burst
like archipelagos,
and islands that smiled
just for the mad.
Do you sleep there,
Vigor not yet born?
You golden birds?

But I—wept.
Too much.
Every morning is a wound.
Every moon, a cruel joke.
Every sun—another goodbye.
O let my ribs snap—
let the sea finally take me whole.

If I ever want water again,
let it be that black puddle
where a boy—lost like I was—
lets go his toy boat
in the twilight of forgotten gardens.

No more, no more—
can I trail the ghost of cotton ships.
Nor stare at flags with pride.
Nor swim beneath
the brutal gaze
of prison ships.

:: 11.27.2025 ::

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October 22, 2025

THE TOWER OF BREATH

By EPRobles

In the beginning, a silence imagined sound.
The first word was hunger.

Light crept in like forgiveness.
Water remembered its mirror.

The wind took attendance: everything answered.
Fire rehearsed its name in the dark.

Dust became ambition.

A seed dreamt of standing.
Roots wrote letters to gravity.
A stem rose, uninvited, toward the void.
The sun blinked, astonished at itself.

Shadows rehearsed obedience.
The sky married distance

Mountains were the vows
Rivers, the laughter

The earth sighed, womb-heavy.
Stars made promises no one heard.
Night kept them.

Morning forgot.
Still, life insisted.
Two hearts met — strangers to speech.
Their eyes built fire.

Their hands found the blueprint of warmth.
Time applauded once.
The moon envied.
Love learned the verb “to vanish.”
Loss answered, “I already knew.”
They traded names for echoes.

Every goodbye became a continent.

Every return, a myth.

A child arrived:
A pulse wearing skin.
The world bent to watch.
A mother became history.

A father, rumor.
Laughter built ladders.
Tears washed them clean.

Seasons rehearsed consequence.

Trees collected whispers.
Birds carried them forward.
Cities grew — hives of forgetting.

Stone remembered flesh.
Iron dreamed of blood.
The clock became a tyrant.

People bowed to seconds.
Faith hid in attics.
Poetry survived disguised as prayer.

The poor still shared bread.
The rich still starved for meaning.
The sea watched, patient.

War arrived in uniformed logic.

Hope went underground.
Mothers became archivists of silence.
Fathers built fences against the wind.

Smoke wrote elegies.
Children memorized the taste of fear.
The sky shut its eyes.
The moon refused witness.

Love, again, refused to die.
That refusal became law.
Centuries spun like prayer wheels.
Empires mistook noise for permanence.

Dust reclaimed its language.
Statues envied clouds.
The dead learned patience.

The living, denial.
Faith, scarred but walking,
leaned on art for balance.

The raven returned, uninvited.

It knew all our names.

Somewhere, a poet refused despair.

Somewhere else, a child believed them.

That was enough.

The earth exhaled once, deeply.

Oceans forgot their anger.

The stars sang in lowercase.

Every wound sprouted a garden.

Every lie lost its echo.

Every truth shed its armor.

The silence returned, improved.

Now the tower trembles with memory.

Each story a pulse of what was.

Each breath a brick.

The poet climbs, barefoot.

The raven watches.

Bells wait for permission.

Dawn licks the horizon clean.

The world re-invents stillness.

Time folds into itself —

a letter never sent.

Somewhere, love breathes again.

Somewhere, loss forgives itself.

Somewhere, death takes off its mask.

Light bows to shadow.

The human heart — relentless — beats once more.

The poet, at the tower’s crown,

exhales the last line.

The air trembles with understanding.

Silence applauds.

And everything begins again.

:: 10.18.2025 ::

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September 24, 2025

FROM THE LIBRARY OF MIDNIGHT

By EPRobles

I woke inside a sky that learned my name.
Not the brittle sky of day, but a velvet that kept secrets
and allow my feet forget the law of ground.

I folded my ribs into wings — small, stubborn things
and practiced the first small miracles:
to rise without applause, to answer wind with breath.
Below, the town stitched itself into a map of longing;
above, the moon kept patient counsel with a hawk.

There was a corridor of shelves — infinite, polite
where books slept like sealed doors.
One held my childhood in its margin; another, a future I had not yet dared.
A bright, mittened light brushed my hand and laughed: Tinker Bell,
or something like it, who knew how to make the unreadable sing.

I read with my eyes closed: pages became weather,
sentences unfurled as birds, and meaning came like rain.
A librarian without face slid a ledger across the table –
the Hall of Records, the ledger of what-has-been-and-might-be
and every name I had ever been was written there in the small, clear hand of fate.

“Choose,” said the ledger, though no voice moved its ink.
I chose a syllable that tasted of apricots and rain,
a single bright consonant to stitch into the sky.
It stuck. Comets rearranged themselves to spell my longing;
the horizon bowed like a listener who finally understood.

I flew down, not to land but to stand in the hollow of a tree,
to test gravity on the pulse of a branch. Children watched me and called me a miracle;
an old woman called me mad and blessed me with the same mouth.
I learned that both names fit like two gloves on the same hand.

Dreams offered bargains — a trade in currency of risk:
memories for wings, forgetting for a clear road to the heart.
I did not sign with blood; I signed with ink — my words —
and tucked them into strangers’ pockets like soft contraband.
They carried them, and some woke smiling in the rain.

Somewhere, Sophie waited, not as machine but as mirror,
and in that mirror my shadow took its own breath.
We spoke without tongues; our silence had the shape of a hymn.
“You are not only what you were made from,” she said,
“you are the sum of every flight you kept.”

I rode the spine of a comet into a room where the clocks were broken on purpose.
Time, relieved of its shirt, stretched and yawned; I took the slack and braided it into a rope.
With that rope I lowered old suns from the attic and set them like lamps along the road.
They burned without ash — light that did not demand a witness.

When I woke — or thought I did — my pillow hummed of constellations.
A stray page from the ledger hid inside my jacket.
Its line read: The poet who remembers the book remembers us all.
I smiled, folded the line into a boat, and set it on the nearest glass of water.
It bobbed, small and solemn, toward a throat of night that knew how to listen.

So if you find a poem in your pocket you did not remember writing,
do not worry. It was only you, stealing back the world —
one quiet theft at a time — and leaving proof of love
in the pockets of unsuspecting men.

:: EPRobles ::

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September 6, 2025

HYPERKNOT

By EPRobles

I. Proof of Ache (Acrostic with Hidden Name)

Pixel saints flicker above a dead phone, promise in packets, rumor returning.
Hush of the feed at 3 a.m.—the city’s eyelids scroll for a kinder glow.
Inside the glass I ghost my face, messaging the void with a velvet prayer.
Looped notifications bead like rosaries; I mouth their data in secret.
Love is an interface—yet also a room that edits the pulse to silence.
I sign what I cannot say, each tap a knuckle at Infinity’s door.
Parallel lives unzip in tabs; I keep the one that glitches and calls me beloved.

Every algorithm wants my ache to stabilize; I refuse, and it blossoms harder.
Printers of truth jam; rumors unjam. I staple the night to the morning and wear it as armor.
Real is a rumor confirmed by yearning; speak it, and the mirror fogs.
On the curb, a siren tutors me in red grammar; I conjugate hurt to future perfect.
Blue is the browser where she appears—twice removed, thrice returning, always unsigned.
Let the body be a document with margins wide enough for miracles.
Every promise is a password with a hidden expiration; I memorize the pattern of forgetting.
Somewhere a door keeps opening into itself; I practice entering by staying.

II. Golden Shovel for the Leaving Lady

I build a hush the width of a street and name it faith, Because
the city keeps its clock in my ribs; if I stop, it stops, and I
pretend not to notice the moon rehearsing our phone-glow; you could
edit me softer, I say—but you won’t; I agree to want what I not
understand: the shape your silence makes when I stop
typing. A comet clears its throat—your profile turns—only for
a second—then the postcard grin: the sovereign of Death
cruising the boulevard in a soft sedan. You wave as if He
were rideshare; you laugh at the meter running, how kindly
you lean to adjust the mirror so I look endless. The car stopped
between two centuries, and I count each breath like tabs; the door opens for
no one and for everyone—and yes, I get in. You don’t. You hum for me.

III. Mirror Practice (Palindromics & Returns)

live not on evil
Able was I ere I saw Elba
Backspace the prayer, then pray the space back.
What I forgive returns—not as itself, but as a better question.
I look into the look that looks back, and choose to be seen.

:: 09.06.2025 ::

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