Dominic Riccitello
May 15, 2026

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to wake inside the thought of this the heights of what we once called us and i take shape through it forming ideas in my head from broken words and half-spoken meanings sentences unfinished yet somehow still understood we make our time together sometimes too lost a little too gone like nights stretched beyond reason like conversations blurred at the edges until we no longer know whether we are healing or simply distracting ourselves from silence and i think maybe we call ourselves broken because it is easier than admitting how deeply we feel things broken by virtues and vices we hate to speak aloud the habits we carry quietly the ache of wanting too much the fear of being seen completely but my vices i love to write about the way he tasted against my skin the warmth of his breath melting into darkened conversations eyes carrying a sullen sadness a man diseased by his own mind by overthinking by longing by the quiet war he fights within himself and i take from these moments but i do not steal them i leave him here instead beneath the sway of the trees where branches split against the sky and shadows move like unfinished thoughts i speak things into existence there confessions disguised as poetry trying to leave pieces of myself inside moments i designed because sometimes imagination feels safer than reality ever could between branches i divide the thoughts living inside my head the versions of myself i no longer accept the fears i wore for too long the old reflections i’m slowly learning to release we realize eventually that waters always shake even the still ponds we stand beside that nothing stays untouched forever tuesday nights become just another day in the week ordinary in appearance yet heavy with memory because sometimes the smallest evenings hold the largest emotions and over time we learn broken lines are sometimes meant to exist that way because when you flip them sideways when you look from another angle they begin forming entirely different meanings a perpendicular street half-lit half-healed yet carrying the feeling of something new and maybe that is all becoming really is not fixing yourself not returning to who you were but standing in the wreckage of old versions and realizing you no longer belong to them i left that desire there for myself between the branches between the split roads between the person i had been and the one finally learning how to walk away without looking back because some endings are not tragic some endings are the first honest thing we ever give ourselves