The Sound of Walls

Anger is not fire.
It is the sound of walls
straining not to crack.

It arrives without a knock—
sometimes quiet as steam
pressing through the cracks
of a soul sealed too long.
Sometimes loud—
a slammed door,
a word flung too fast
to ever catch again.

We have been taught to cage it,
label it dangerous,
call it wrong before we ask:
Why has it come?

But anger is not a monster.
It is a signal.
A trembling voice that says:
"This mattered to me."
"I wanted control."
"I didn’t feel safe."

Feelings don’t know day from night.
They don’t sort themselves into good or bad.
They rise to say: You are still alive.
Still paying attention.
Still hoping.

This is not about rage
that wounds others.
This is about the ember that flickers
when you have held too much
and said too little.
The ache of being misunderstood
for too long.

Anger is the sound of self-respect
knocking from the inside,
asking to be heard
before it turns to flame.

So listen.
Ask it what it needs.
Not to manage it—
but to understand it,
to hold it long enough
that it softens
and tells you the truth.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Even in This Corner

I wasn’t praying tonight.

I was just sitting—
in that slow ache of sadness
that doesn’t belong to you
but still finds its way in.

The kind of melancholy
born from being near a weight
that was never yours to carry.

And I almost let it stay.

Old thoughts began their circle,
whispering stories
I’ve outgrown but sometimes still listen to.

And then—
it was interrupted.

Not loud. Not forceful.
Just a moment so pure,
so unexpected,
that it lifted me out of that spiral
without asking permission.

And I knew.

I knew that even in all this chaos,
even with all the souls in this world,
God saw me.

My Creator—who goes by many names,
wears many faces,
answers in the language we each understand—

looked in on me.

Not because I cried out.
Not because I earned it.

Just because I’m loved.

And that—
that is why I had to come here
and write this down before sleep.

Because in this small corner of the world,
with my small, momentary ache,
I was reminded:

I still matter.

And the love that created galaxies
still has time
to interrupt my sadness
with beauty.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

To Love, Wildly

Fall in love—
with reckless, radiant hands.
With the kind of kiss that dares
to alter your atoms.

Let your heart sprint barefoot
across moonlit streets,
chasing butterflies that speak
in the language of fingertips.

Let someone brush the hair
from your eyes
like they’re reading scripture.
Let their scent become your breath—
not perfume,
but that skin-deep memory
you can smell in dreams.

Taste the words that linger on their mouth,
sip the sound of their laughter.
Let your name on their tongue
sound like your favorite song
said softly in a storm.

Let your bodies speak
before your mouths do.
Let a single graze of skin
rewire your chemistry—
a brushfire beneath bone.

And when they look at you
and already know the thought
before it’s born,
love them harder.

Love them like it’s the first time
the world has ever known love.

Let your longing
start in your mind,
travel down your spine,
curl into your toes
until every part of you
aches for their arrival.

And when your eyes meet—

nothing else exists.
Time bows.
The noise hushes.

This is the kind of love
you don’t explain.
You just live it,
wildly.

Unapologetically.

The rest of life will teach you limits.
But this—
this is where you learn
how to fly.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Of Moonlight, Moth, and Flame

I caught a glimpse of the almost-full moon tonight.
She did not call with sound,
only with silver—
a curve of light, sharp as memory.

She looked back so deeply
it held me there,
my gaze lingering in her glow
as the skies dimmed into shades of midnight.

I turned away—
just a moment—
and when I looked again,
she was gone.

Not hidden,
but withheld.

I stepped forward, into the center of it all,
searching the sky.
The clouds had gathered,
closed the curtain on her stage.
I—I wasn’t done
with the slow burn of devotion,
my gaze fixed in a longing
only she could ignite.

The fire behind me rose—
a hush that crackled.
Sparks leapt skyward
like offerings flung from earth to ether.

I sat with it,
let it speak.
Fire always does.

Then, the moth came—
a winged hush,
a pulse of dusk
that landed soft against my skin.

I waited for a message,
a passing whisper from the moon.
But he just stayed,
still,
a silent flutter of being.

I lifted him gently,
placed him on a leaf nearby.
And when I turned
to reach for my brush—
he was gone too.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

When Lightning First Struck

I didn’t just lose someone.
I lost the story written in starlight,
scripted beneath a moonroof,
where silence held possibility.
You didn’t finish it.
And something holy was left—unspoken.

Guilt?
That belongs to you,
your gods,
and the long shadows of karma and murphy.
The reckoning wasn’t about love lost—
but about a love
that should never have been dreamt aloud.

You spoke of forever,
but you were already rehearsing the ending.
A prophecy you fed,
until it bloomed bitter and true.
I mistook your silence for mystery,
your distance for meaning.
You were a pause I turned into a sentence—
and I bled believing.

You took what I offered—
skin warm with trust,
laughter mid-breath,
vulnerability cupped like water.
But not the sanctuary of my soul.
That was never yours to hold.
It has always been guarded,
watched by those who do not sleep.

We unraveled, but the echo lingered
It pressed itself into my ribs.
Still—
I no longer chase sound.
I walk toward stillness.

You didn’t walk the story we began.
You veered off into safer woods.
And I?
I kept walking,
torchless, barefoot,
guided only by my own becoming.
Not blind—
but believing.
You were not the fire.
You were the flicker
that made me crave heat.

We weren’t friends.
We were lightning—immediate,
blinding,
unsustainable.
I had already carved a space
for forever.
But you weren’t built to stay.

My spirit never shattered.
It bowed,
learned,
rose wiser.
I can speak beautiful lies—
but I prefer the sharp edge
of truth.

I remember everything—
not to ache,
but to harvest the lesson.
The goodbye was mine,
because you never gave one.

And yes—
I searched for your obituary.
A part of me needed to see
if you meant it
when you said you’d die without me.
Turns out,
we both kept breathing.

I carried it.
I held it.
And now—
I let it fall like broken glass
from open palms—
cutting, glinting,
refusing to be anything
but what it is.

You were the first lightning strike.
But I am the storm now.
That’s the only truth
that still stands.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

To the One Who Asked About Love

A letter I didn’t know I needed to write.

You asked me
why I question lightning.

And I didn’t know how to answer
without unraveling.

I told you I’ve known
the 3AM kind—
the kind that burns
like worship
and withdrawal
at the same time.

I’ve known love
like a drug,
a high so dizzying
I forgot my own name
just to taste it again.

I’ve known the kind
that leaves teeth marks on memory,
that lives in the back of my throat,
in the pauses between songs
I can’t listen to anymore.

But you,
you spoke of love
as something still.
A presence,
not a pursuit.
A being,
not a bargain.

And I didn’t know what to say to that.
Because I have never loved
without gripping.
Without proving.
Without performing.

You said—
“just let it be an experience.”
Love,
in its purest form.
Not romance.
Not ache.
Not need dressed up in longing.

And I heard you.
I did.

But here’s the part
I didn’t say:

The absence of love—
or what I thought was love—
is frighteningly silent
and deafening
at the same time.

It’s withdrawal.
It’s walking through your own body
like an empty house
waiting for a knock
that may never come.

But maybe…
maybe that silence
is the place love lives
when it’s not screaming
for attention.

Maybe that’s where
the real kind waits.
The soft kind.
The kind that stays
without needing
a reason.

So yes—
I’m falling in love
with myself.
Slowly.
Without fireworks.
Without addiction.
Without needing to be rescued.

Maybe lightning does strike twice.
Or maybe it just learns
to come quietly
the second time.

But I’m listening now.
Not for thunder—
but for truth.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Monologue #4: The Ache of Being Seen

There is a part of me I’ve preserved—not out of authenticity, but out of loyalty. Not the noble kind, but the silent, complicated kind that grows in the shadow of family. Specifically, the side of my family that holds tightly to tradition, to status, to tangible markers of success. Half of me comes from that world. Half of me understands it, even when I don't belong to it.

It’s not a daily battle. I live my life, I walk my path. But somewhere inside, I still carry the hope that one day they’ll look at my life and say: Yes, that’s enough. Not because it aligns with my values, but because it fits their mold—success that can be touched, measured, praised. A big house. A name. A number. That strange, hollow currency of worth.

I know it’s superficial. I say that plainly. But it’s honest. And it’s mine—this strange ache for a kind of acceptance that I know wouldn’t fulfill me. Still, it lingers. Because I love them. Because I was shaped, in part, by them. Because to be accepted by those you value—on their terms—can feel like safety, even when it’s a cage.

I’ve played the scene in my mind a hundred ways. Their pride, their approval, matched to external success. Never to my joy. Never to my passion. Those things, they never quite knew what to do with. Their love is not absent. But their understanding is.

What kind of love is it that persists without understanding? I don’t know. Maybe it’s duty. Maybe it’s tradition. Love, in bloodlines, often comes with an unspoken contract: we are bound by history, by name, by proximity. And that is a kind of love. But the love I crave—the one that sustains and liberates—is made of recognition. It is the kind I’ve found in souls who are not kin by blood but by resonance. The kind that says: I see you. As you are. Without needing you to change to be enough.

And I’ve tried—God, I’ve tried—to explain myself. To translate. To bridge the gap. I gave up eventually, maybe out of exhaustion, maybe wisdom. And strangely, that surrender freed me. It showed me that understanding isn’t owed. That my path is my own.

But still. I don’t know what it feels like to be accepted by them for the sheer fact that I exist—that I am enough, without translation. That grief has no sound. Only space.

Maybe that’s what this is: an acknowledgment. A reckoning. A decision to carry forward only what’s mine, and leave the rest behind. Because I am learning. And part of that learning is knowing when to stop carrying things that no longer serve the journey.

Letting go isn’t easy. It’s not clean. It’s not instant. It feels like saying goodbye to a village you grew up in, even when that village never truly saw you. You walk forward without a map, only the clarity that this path—uncertain, unsanctioned—is yours. That has to be enough.

And when I choose to love now, I try to do it with fewer expectations. No ladders. No scorekeeping. Just presence. Just the truth of recognizing another and saying: you don’t need to earn your place here. That, to me, is the kind of love worth carrying forward.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Monologue #3: On the Edge of Morning

I’ve been thinking about whether I can write joy—or if pain is the reason I can even recognize it. I set the pain down for a moment, wanting to give happiness a voice, and then my mind wandered. Could I express joy without having known sorrow? If I didn’t know the texture of ache, would the light feel as rich? Am I chasing a paradox, or living one? What I’ve come to understand is this: my happiness isn't loud or unshakable—it's in the meaning I find through the ache of transformation. There's beauty in suffering when it leads to growth, and for me, it has. I see the change with clarity. And I know this is just the beginning. Most days I accept that. Other days, I need reminding. That’s where humility lives—in the process. What follows is not an answer, but a reflection. A monologue from the edge of who I was, stepping into who I’m becoming.

On the Edge of Morning

Can I write joy?
Or is it only the shadow of pain that has taught me the shape of light?
I wonder this often, usually in the quiet—
when the night hasn’t quite let go
and the sky is still debating whether to rise.

Pain, I know.
Pain has carved rivers through me,
made valleys where there once were flatlands.
It’s honest, relentless—
and it’s made me pay attention.

But lately…
there is this thing.
This soft, golden thing that arrives not with trumpets,
but with the sigh of birds and the shy stretch of light over rooftops.
Joy.

Not loud. Not demanding.
Just… here.
Present the way breath is present when you stop trying to hold it.

I used to belong to dusk.
To the ache of endings,
to the velvet hush of moonrise,
to the safety of being unseen.

But something has shifted.
Life—or maybe loss—has spun me toward morning.
And dawn,
that unfamiliar face,
now feels like a mirror I didn’t know I needed.

Joy—
if it’s a color, it’s the ones at dawn, isn’t it?
Those first hues after the black has burned away.
The blues that haven’t yet decided they’ll become sky,
the orange like the breath of something divine
exhaling over the edge of the earth.

If it’s a sound, it’s the birds.
But not just the birds—
it’s the vibration of their song.
There’s a certain kind of wakefulness in the morning air
that doesn’t exist at dusk.
It’s a different kind of permission.

I used to live for the moon.
I was a creature of dusk,
a loyal student of shadow.
But now—
now I can capture the morning light perfectly.
I didn’t seek this shift,
but life…
life will reassign you without asking.

And I’ve accepted this displacement,
because in it is new learning,
absorption, awakening.
Even if I didn’t plan it—
even if some days, I still miss the comfort of darkness.

There’s a difference, I’ve learned,
between happiness and joy.
Happiness is quicksilver—
slippery, bright, often borrowed.
Joy feels more like a moment you can bottle—
solid, still, deeply yours.

Maybe I am playing with semantics.
But isn’t that what poets do?
We give names to things that don’t ask for them—
we try to frame the light
even as it shifts.

My happiness, if I name it now,
is in knowing that the pain of this transformation
was not for nothing.
That there is beauty in the suffering
when the suffering is not just decay—
but a kind of compost for the soul.

Growth has come.
Clarity has come.
And with them, humility—
the kind that kneels quietly,
not as a surrender,
but as a reverent knowing:
This is just the beginning.

Some days, I remember that easily.
Most days, I carry it gently.
Other days, I forget, and must be reminded—
and even that forgetting is part of the becoming.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

What the Frequency Made Visible

It wasn’t one memory—
but hundreds
unfolding across the inner screen.

Not a story.
Not a scene.
Just movement.

A flash of something—
past life, past moment,
past recognition.
Gone again
before I could name it.

Each beat shifted
to one side of my body,
each rhythm brushing through bone
like breath made visible.

I was not the listener—
I was the stage.
I was the light cue,
the velvet curtain,
the soft footfall no one notices
but feels.

Music moved
through my fingertips
without needing direction.
I didn’t reach for the moment—
I let it pass through.

No memory held me.
But all of them touched me.

With Grace&Ink,

Mai

Written after sitting in darkness,
headphones in,
letting 8D audio move through more than just sound.

Monologue #2, part two:The Hill I Die On

Monologue series.

-on trust, storms, and the sacredness of becoming

It’s not the silence that wounds me.
Not the ache of seeing the storm and staying quiet.

What hurts more
is knowing they need the storm.

To become who they are meant to be.
To be forged,
not spared.

It cuts against every instinct in me—
to rescue, to shelter, to intervene.
But I know that journey,
and I know
how necessary it is.

I’ve walked through fire,
been carved by floods and storms.
I’ve seen the shaping.
And it was not in spite of the pain
but because of it
that I found my form.

So I remind myself:
there is a pattern to becoming.
There is a design in the undoing.

And more than that—
there is trust.

A trust that no path is given
without a way through.
That no soul walks alone
if they’re willing to see
what walks beside them.

That’s my anchor.
That’s the truth I cling to.
Not because it’s easy.
But because it’s everything.

If others say,
“That’s the hill I’ll die on,”
then this—
this is mine.

The belief that no pain
is handed to us
without also handing us
the tools,
the grace,
and the unseen arms
to carry it through.

That is the truth I will not abandon.
That is the truth I live and die by.
Not to test fate—
but to honor it.

Because becoming
is not a test.
It’s a return.
To what matters most.

With grace -with ink,

Mai

Monologue #2, part one: The Observer

Monologue series

There’s a pain that arrives
when you can see it all laid out in front of you—
the patterns, the process,
the road unfolding,
familiar in its ache.

And you’re torn.

Is this self-prophecy?
Are you simply waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Or when it drops—
is that the proof
that it was always going to fall?
Beyond control.
Beyond intervention.

This is not something I’m in.
This is something I witness.

And that, in itself, is a strange pain.

I am not the protagonist.
Not even the supporting actress.
Just the audience.
Watching.
Seeing the story before it closes—
and wanting, in some quiet ache,
to yell across the curtain,
“Turn back.”
But it is not my place.

And so obediently, I watch.
I cry.
For the ache that is coming,
for a pain I know by heart
but cannot prevent.

I sit in stillness and wonder:
Why do we crave the storm?

Is it the calm that frightens us?
Or is the chaos simply
more familiar than the unknown?
Does this, too,
boil down to fear?

Fear—the thing that makes us run,
and sometimes the same thing that makes us stay.

And if we ever conquer it—
if we sit with what is,
and resist the urge to interfere,
how then
do we love
without rescuing?

That, perhaps,
is the lesson.

And it is not an easy one.
But it is necessary.

With grace -with ink,

Mai

Bridge of Inspiration

(A response to “A Love Letter From The Desert To The Ice” by @philoocology)

To the child of ‘cracked earth’ who wrote of blooms just beyond reach,
of love to the ‘daughter of snow’—or the ‘falcon’ who ‘fell for the owl’ in speech,
the words that fell from your longing and woe
flowed in whispers your spirit bestowed
onto pages for all—the innocent of heart,
and wandering spirits of old, torn apart.

I thank you for the rawness you’ve chosen to bare,
the ache of your suffering, brave and rare.

In words you dipped, drenched in diamonds and gold,
you penned your ache as the silence grew cold—
on pages shaped by time and fate,
marking the hours too cruel to wait.

I wait, too, to hear ‘silence crackle from thirst,’
the first show—unrehearsed.
Perhaps then I’ll see, if only a trace,
How your story moves through time and space.

The questions you posed—uncertain, unsaid—
sent me seeking what once lay dead.

Your ‘what if roots remember someone they had never touch’—
I read and re-read, struck by so much,
as time and distance slow-danced in my head,
your echoes weaving what needed to be read.

Perhaps in madness I may join you there,
like one who peers through the glass with a stare—
through the keyhole, the madness he vowed to endure,
for love that’s intangible, tender, and pure.

And I too have wished that shadows might hold,
that the barely-felt touch could somehow be bold.
Like you, I’ve learned not to yearn overmuch,
lest the unattainable crumble at my clutch.

With grace, with ink,
Mai

Italicized phrases within this piece are quoted directly from “A Love Letter From The Desert To The Ice” by @philoocology.

Used with deep respect and in poetic response.

Monologue #1: The Death of Need

A reflective series on the inner reckonings we rarely speak aloud.

In becoming, there’s an understanding that you are healing—
that you are evolving.
But today, let’s talk about the version of you that had to die
so that you could live.

Not the parts that softened.
Not the wounds that closed.
But the part of you that had to be buried
so you could finally breathe the air
that would carry you into something next—
something more,
something unknown.

For me,
it was my identity as the one who is needed.

I searched my mind,
walked down its long hallway—
through open doors,
and doors shut so tightly I could still hear them echo.
I walked through them all
to find the root of that belief:
That I am only as worthy
as the help I give.

That my purpose,
my place,
my very birthright
was to be needed.

I sat quietly in the center of my soul
and asked both my mind and my heart:
Is the thread between you—
this thread called need—
still vital?
Or can it be severed and buried?

It was not a beautiful funeral.
It was a reluctant burial.
And in the moment of her death,
I released her
in sweet sorrow
and reverent love.

An enigma, wrapped in paradox:
Because she, herself,
was no longer needed.

She lived in ignorant bliss,
fed by beautiful lies
that pacified her
for years
that became decades.

Until one day,
she turned around
and saw clearly:

Being needed
was never love.
And being needed
would never make her enough.

Other parts of me are healing.
But need had to die.

The vines that grew around her
suffocated her.
Blinded her.
Twisted her essence.

And even when I tried
to untangle her—
she was already gone.

After death,
there was no rebirth.
Only the ghost of memory.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

I Have Known the Blade of My Own Tongue

I have known
how a word,
just one—
sharpened by the heat
of timing, tone, and storm—
can lacerate
more than silence ever could.

I have carried that blade in my mouth.
Felt the way youth
lets it slip,
how rage once gave it a home.

But I have also lived long enough
to choose.

To place it down.
To speak,
instead,
in bridges.
In balm.

In offerings of peace
as protest
against my own potential
to unravel someone else.

Not because I am good,
but because I am tethered—
to something brighter
than my shadow.

Rerooted

Not all roots come from blood.
Some are grown in silence—
in the aftermath of absence,
in the choice to keep going
when the world you came from
never truly held you.

You are allowed to reroute.
You are allowed to outgrow
the soil that first bore you.

This glass of water,
these delicate strands unfurling—
they are proof.

Family can be chosen.
Belonging can be built.
Roots can form in borrowed light
and filtered sun,
on a windowsill,
with no map, no fanfare—
just a will to reach
and a source that says yes.

You can re-root at any time.
You already are.

Through the Veil

I walked in my mother’s shadow
as her life took roads traveled.

I walked in my own,
and found roads forlorn.

I walk in light,
aligned with my Creator’s design.
And through the veil I shine—
lifted, divine.

It is different now—
looking back at her life
from where I stand.
She has passed on;
the door in this world closed.
But I can still speak to her,
feel her, walk beside her in ways
that don’t require form.

There is a difference
between the roads we inherit
and the ones we choose.
And the balance—
that tightrope between history and becoming—
is an internal struggle many carry.

I have walked the inherited path.
There is nothing against her.
In truth, I love her more now
than I did when I was a child,
watching her walk those roads
with silence and strength.

I now walk differently.
Not to escape,
but to evolve.

I don’t need names for what came before:
no categories,
no titles,
no clean diagnosis of pain.

We all grow up in stories
stitched with both perfect and broken threads.
But I no longer need to hold
every wound in my hands
as proof of my journey.

There is beauty even in suffering,
if you stop trying to control it.
If you let go of the need to label,
you begin to see life differently:
as a series of offerings,
as lessons in release.

I choose what I carry forward.
I choose what I bury with grace.

And in that space,
I rely on the light of my Creator—
on the force that weaves all things.
No name required,
just the knowing.

This is the veil I speak of:
walking from shadow into light,
from inheritance into intention,
from story into soul.

I walk now
not to prove,
but to be.
And that,
is enough.

… And His Name Was Michael

She waits for his death for in this life, 

their flames infused, but time thought it not be –

the ghost that visits 

is her imagination playing board games with reality.

She lays in sweet longing, 

turning pages of days torn and crumpled,

talking to the cloned figment 

her day happen to stumble.  

Heights of love swirls,

a jolted exhale from memories of their touch

 –a cry, a tear  –and more, 

the agony of sorrow, too much. 

For those almost tomorrows.

Ode To Rain

I love the smell—
earth rising to meet the sky.
I feel the touch—
each drop, a fingertip
from time’s first breath.

I taste it on my lips,
metallic, wild, alive.
I see the rain,
falling like truth
we once knew by heart,
then somehow forgot.

Hard rain,
pounding into the earth—
nourishing, stirring,
moving her bones
and mine.

Soft rain,
barely a whisper,
a lullaby for the restless soul.

I love the sound
upon a tin roof,
in the hush of busy streets,
across open fields,
beneath forest canopies—
and with crickets,
and with birds,
singing as if in prayer.

Rain at sunset—
gold dissolving into gray.
Rain at dawn—
a hymn too quiet to name.
Rain at dusk—
like memory returning
without apology.

I have laid in rain.
Danced within it.
Walked through it—
as though meeting myself
for the first time.

I am one with the rain.
It moves through me,
restores me,
reminds me:

I am not only the calm—
I am the storm within.