Flaked

The sky peels back like old paint,

cracks spreading where memories refuse to stick,

and I walk barefoot through yesterday’s ash,

each step a whisper of could-have-beens,

could’ve, should’ve, might’ve,

and the wind licks my ears with soft contempt.

My hands are sticky with time,

I scrape off pieces,

fingers trembling like fragile icicles,

and they shatter before they reach the ground—

flaked, fractured, forgotten,

as if gravity itself recoils from my touch.

Thoughts come in splintered fragments,

a carousel of faces I never knew,

smiles broken, words unfinished,

echoes bouncing in the hollow chest of my mind.

I chase them—

the broken echoes, the frayed edges—

but the harder I reach,

the more they dissolve into dust

that tastes like yesterday’s coffee and cigarette smoke.

The streets outside hum with indifferent voices,

I hear them, half-captured,

like tuning an old radio,

a static lullaby of someone else’s lives

that I cannot borrow,

cannot touch, cannot pause long enough

to leave an imprint.

I see you sometimes in a reflection,

a shadow across the fogged window

of my own failing patience,

and I wonder if you ever flake

like me,

leaving pieces scattered across someone else’s floor,

your own thoughts crumbling in the wind.

Rain begins, soft, hesitant,

and it pulls the dust from my hair,

the fragments of thoughts stick to my skin,

tiny glittering flecks of memory,

flickering in the wet silver light,

and I realize

I am a mosaic of broken pieces

that refuse to stay together,

a constellation that rearranges itself

every time I blink.

I laugh at the absurdity—

a dry, brittle laugh

that flakes off my lips

and dissolves in the puddles below,

splintered like everything else.

My reflection smiles back,

but I cannot tell if it’s mine or someone else’s,

and the city continues its indifferent pulse,

a heartbeat I cannot sync with,

a rhythm I cannot claim.

Every flake tells a story

even if it is incomplete,

even if it falls before the sentence ends,

and I gather them in the hollow of my hands,

some sharp, some soft,

and all shimmering,

and I think

maybe, just maybe,

being broken this way

is its own kind of art.

The night swallows the edges,

and I, barefoot and flaked,

walk forward anyway,

each step a fragment,

each breath a shard of thought

floating in a mind that refuses to pause,

that refuses to settle,

a storm of self,

a million pieces

and yet whole enough to feel.