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Dress Code: Man

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They hand you a title like it’s iron. Be a man. No instructions. Just penalties. Stand tall. But not too tall. Speak up. But don’t get loud. Hold your ground. But don’t make a scene. You learn quick— anger is dangerous unless it’s useful. violence is wrong unless it’s needed. silence is strength until it looks like weakness. They measure you with rulers that bend. “You’re not a real man if—” fill in the blank like a threat. Like a dare. Like a verdict already written. So you swallow it. The disrespect. The sideways comments. The quiet tests. You nod. You breathe. You calculate. Because one wrong move and suddenly— you’re not controlled, you’re a problem. But one right move at the wrong time? Still a problem. You become something else over time. Not soft. Not hard. Tempered. Like steel that’s been heated cooled heated again— until it forgets what it was before the fire. And still— somewhere in the noise— you’re asking a question no one answers: How the hell do I be everythin...
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Still Waiting to Be Enough

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I wake up and the world already has a list for me. A man is supposed to be this, supposed to have that, supposed to stand taller, earn more, own more, be more. And I sit there with sleep still in my eyes wondering if I missed the day they handed out the blueprint. Because I try. Every day, I try. Not the kind of try that gets applause, not the kind that turns heads, just the quiet kind that doesn’t break the surface. The kind nobody sees. They say men are providers. But what do you call a man who’s still building the table with splinters in his hands? They say men shouldn’t live like this, shouldn’t want things like that, shouldn’t spend time escaping into games, shouldn’t fall short of a number someone else decided matters. Height. Money. Status. Space. Like worth can be measured in inches and paychecks and square footage. And I wonder— if I ever reach those peaks, those polished, distant pinnacles, will they finally look at me and say, there he is. Or will I just be anoth...
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Ash Where the Promise Was

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They told me— stay in school, keep your head down, do the work, and one day the world would open like a door that had been waiting for me. They said there was a life on the other side of effort— steady hands, steady pay, a home that didn’t shake when the wind changed, a woman, some kids, a future that didn’t feel like it could be taken. They said dream like it was something you could build. So I built. Brick by brick, hour by hour, paycheck by paycheck— I built something that looked like freedom. And then one day a man I’ve never met in a room I’ll never see decided numbers mattered more than names— and just like that my life became a line item. Cut. Not because I failed. Not because I broke. Not because I didn’t earn it. Just… cut. I’ve been laid off so many times I stopped calling it bad luck and started calling it what it is— a system that eats its own builders to keep the lights pretty for people who never touched the ground. They told me the dream was real. But standin...
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Before the Fire Learns Our Names

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I don’t want the kind of love that kicks the door in, loud and reckless, tracking mud across the floor just to leave it behind when it gets bored. I’ve seen that kind of fire before. It burns like it’s trying to prove something and dies the same way. No… I want the kind that pulls up a chair without asking, sits beside me like it’s always been there, like it never needed an introduction. I hope we become best friends first. Not in that watered-down, half-committed, “let’s see where this goes” way people use when they’re afraid to mean something— I mean real. The kind where I reach for my phone and your name is already halfway dialed before I even know why. The kind where nothing is planned, but somehow we’ve built entire days out of doing absolutely nothing. I want to laugh with you over shit that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. Build something stupid like Lego sets and treat it like architecture. Lose sleep on purpose because the night feels too short when you’re in it...
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Where I Stand

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I can’t make you fall for me. I can’t make you see what I see. I can’t make you understand that I’d love you in ways the men before me never even considered. I’d learn you. Study you. Become fluent in the way you need to be loved. But I can’t make you believe that. And I can’t make you ready. All I can do is be here. The rest… is on you to see. And for as long as you want— I’ll be around.
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The Version I Never Touched

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They fumbled her like something borrowed like something they assumed would still be there after they dropped it and it was that’s the part that gets me not that they messed up people mess up all the time it’s that they got the chance to-- to see her laugh in real time to hear her talk about nothing and make it feel like something they got access to  the version of her I only ever met through fragments-- stories moments echoes of what she was before she learned to guard it and I sit here piecing her together like a secondhand memory thinking how do you stand in front of something like that and treat it like it’s replaceable? how do you look at someone who shines that quietly and decide “this is enough to neglect” I’m not saying I would’ve been perfect I would’ve had my flaws my blind spots my own ways of getting it wrong but I would’ve known I would’ve known what I was holding and maybe that’s the real weight of it not that they broke something but that they were trusted...
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Measured Fire

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I don’t fear speaking— I fear the echo. That hollow return where something I meant lands somewhere and just… doesn’t come back. I learned people in a house full of noise, where doors didn’t stay closed and voices didn’t have to knock. If I turned around, someone was there. Not wondering. Not weighing me. Just there. So now— this world of half-open doors and “hit me when you can” connections feels like walking into rooms where the lights pretend to stay on. When I care, it’s not casual. It’s not “we’ll see.” It’s pull up a chair, stay a while, I’ll remember how you take your silence. But I’ve watched that kind of care get mistaken for convenience. Watched effort become background noise. Watched myself turn into something people visit instead of something they build with. So I learned restraint. Learned to read pauses like weather patterns. Learned that sometimes a smile is just something someone wears until something better happens. Now I measure everything. Not because I wa...
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