POETRY.
“The Light”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
The branches turn white,
bones rising and twisting into the sky
beneath a new moon’s glow.
My feet run endlessly through the late-night fog.
I watch the face of my beloved pass like a ghost,
and feel the blood slip quietly from my veins.
Tell me where I must wander.
Tell me where I belong among the corpses.
Can safety exist only
in the small cavity of my own frail heart?
Can this flesh sustain such a heavy soul,
or is my skeleton cracking
like the branches above me?
Is my skin tearing, reshaping itself
into something born from my dreams?
If hell were to open into heaven,
could I accept a loss so great
that my heart becomes only a dull flicker?
It was once a blistering sun.
I feel the pulse beneath the ground.
The soil stirs.
Ancient roots begin to pull me downward.
A fever moves through me.
A gentle hand takes hold.
The earth opens and draws me in.
This is not an ending.
It is another beginning.
The drumming starts.
The voices grow louder.
I feel the power as I sink
lower and lower.
I am at peace with the dead.
For now, I am among them.
I will awaken one day.
But until then,
the creatures of the soil will take what remains of me
and, for once,
my body will know peace.
“In Decay We Bloom”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
It’s spring, yet, I feel so alone.
The ground is thawing and the corpses begin to bloom the flowers that one day our lovers will place upon our graves.
I always said I’d be the first to go.
That when the sun set and the colors escaped from my vision, I’d find that light.
But I feel as if I’ve already died.
All I yearn for is a home,
A place for my soul to rest.
If I had followed that heartbeat till the end,
We both wouldn’t have made it through.
I miss that warmth, your guiding light.
In the end I felt that thread thinning out.
I gave my all, but I let it rip.
I remember that feeling.
It was only autumn.
The seasons had not yet changed.
I felt the sun set for the last time that night.
When I awoke, I was cold.
My limbs stiff and my eyes glossed.
How many moments passed?
How many moments since
The feelings faded?
The end was near, but maybe it had happened already?
They say when you die, that the sun shines even more brightly.
illuminating the sky as your soul crosses into that endless city.
Maybe that’s how love grows.
But when love dies-
The only thing you see are those silent words, hurting eyes.
They’ll lay the dirt upon my body as I say my final goodbye.
As I fall under I see one last glimpse of that sunset.
Those colors will be with me, deep down in the ground.
Then I know the end has come.
I pulled my limbs from yours.
Ripped my heart out and let it dry.
Now I’ll rest here.
Thinking…
That life, only comes once.
And forever means nothing when the only one holding onto you chose to let go, before you even jumped.
“The Birth of Darkness (Mother)”
Poem by: Nik Winghart
From the soil we were shaped,
pressed together from the splintered bones
of those who failed before us.
We were not born,
we were assembled,
woven through roots and dead things,
stitched with moonlight that never warmed.
Among budding flowers and silver rot,
we woke without names.
Our mother was never seen,
only felt in the way she expelled us,
the way release felt like abandonment
burned directly into our chemistry.
Agony was our first breath.
Love, if it existed,
was not gentle enough to remember.
No cradle, no caress.
Only the lesson that crawling alone
was survival’s native language.
To scream was to be acknowledged.
To bleed was to be noticed.
Pain became currency,
injury a substitute for affection.
And still, sometimes,
I feel a pulse where a heart should be,
beating like something trying to escape.
The urge to run became my freedom.
To choose solitude over belonging.
To bind myself to another now feels terminal,
like rehearsing an ending
I once begged for.
Belonging became a threat
disguised as a dream.
If validation is love,
does that mean I am loved?
Or only tolerated by the noise I make?
The flowers left in November
were erased without ceremony,
swept into the long teeth of winter.
Cold teaches permanence better than warmth ever could.
Through a cracked door
I find the moon.
Watching.
Waiting.
She does not touch.
She does not promise.
She only illuminates what already hurts.
My true mother.
She paints my body of thorns in silver,
makes the damage undeniable.
To touch me is to be cut.
To know me is to accept
that darkness trails me like inheritance.
If I smile and mean it,
there is trust.
But trust demands surrender,
and surrender feels like extinction.
An ending of everything I’ve learned
to survive.
So I crawl across splintered floors,
letting them carve my new skin,
proof that I am still here.
I cry out for someone,
anyone,
but the echo answers first.
You are dead.
And so is dad.
Years later, I write this
while your absence gnaws at my sleep,
a ghost that never learned to leave.
My birthday approaches like a verdict.
Twenty-seven years since something went wrong
before I could choose otherwise.
I wonder who I would have been
if you had stayed.
But even now, in this thick, inherited dark,
I feel a love colder and truer
than anything you might have given.
Not mercy.
Not warmth.
But endurance.
The kind that lets me live
where others were buried.
“If We Drown”
Poem by Nik Winghart
In these heavy waters we no longer swim,
we orbit each other like lost moons,
dragged by tides that do not care for names.
Our arms feel light, almost unearned,
but below, the kelp tightens patiently,
green sculptures wrapping our ankles,
teaching us how to stay.
The night sky watches, ancient and awake.
Stars flicker like warnings we never learned to read.
All I see of you now
is the faint gleam in your eyes,
not fading,
withdrawing,
like a door closing softly underwater.
The sea has been calling us for lifetimes.
It knows the sound of our bones.
Where does the timeline of us fracture?
Where does it rot into legend?
If we stood on land,
would we collapse into dust,
too dry to remember how to hold each other?
Would the dreamland have rejected us,
or would we have ruined it ourselves
with our quiet failures?
Salt coats my mouth like a vow I cannot keep.
I look upward and wonder
if disappearance is gentler than being found.
By morning,
would they search the surface,
or would the tides have already rewritten us
into something unrecognizable,
something clean?
The night sky is cruelly beautiful,
a throne room for indifferent gods.
I lift my eyes and give my last wish
to the same star that once promised safety.
Keep me hidden.
Let me be chosen.
Let this hurt mean I was real.
The stars drift on,
unmoved, unblinking.
I think of us,
of how I never learned the right words.
I am asleep inside myself,
dreaming of air,
and you are awake in the ocean’s curse,
listening to it learn your shape.
I think about how far you’ve come.
From the ocean, we bloom
strange and luminous,
fed by pressure and silence.
From the garden,
bones were always doomed,
destined to crack
once the roots remembered
what they were burying.
“OBJECTS AS MAGIC”
A poem by : Nik Winghart
Touch an object
and it listens.
Some lean toward your skin.
some stay asleep.
Some wrap around you like a shield.
Some you hold onto for dear life.
some remember you before you remember them.
Is the power created in the matter,
or stitched in at the moment of giving?
A new hope.
passing hand to hand?
Everything owns a a time.
Not all of it survives.
Some spells thin over time.
Some never loosen their hold.
A blanket keeps you safe in the darkest of nights.
A stuffed hippo learns your name.
They outlive the nights that made them necessary
and keep watch anyway.
Is it memory that binds them?
or the repetition?
the way you taught the object where safety lies?
Objects become vessels.
They are fed with touch.
with tears pressed quietly into fabric-
with wishes never spoken aloud.
They store what you cannot carry.
The sweetest parts.
The sharpest and most broken.
Items are not born magical.
They are created.
By need.
By love.
By staying.
“CHOKE”
A Poem By Nik Winghart
Let me disappear into the wind for a while.
Let the thunderstorms take me.
Let the rain guide me into another lifetime.
Let the forest sway above me,
its branches closing in,
covering me.
Let my body sink into the soil
until the next defrost.
As flowers bloom and heat devours,
let my skin melt into the ground,
supporting the life I no longer live.
Let my bones be washed by the creatures beneath,
teeth licking clean,
as if I were something sweet.
This is a world where beauty lies
and safety decays.
Still, let me speak my truth
until the dawn begins to break.
I see the meaning.
I’ve learned the lessons.
But I am far from a master,
wandering the cave of vulnerability
with no way out.
I must find the light within my aching body,
find the pulse in the rage that’s building,
to become mutable again.
For myself,
or for others?
This shell I inhabit, passed down through generations,
fits better for your pleasure
than my becoming.
These limbs, draped in cobwebs,
hide berries that could heal my heart.
Towering webs hold the secrets
of lost communities
and forgotten souls.
Do I walk through the forest of the weavers,
or move forward?
That is the question.
I see the moments I’ve lived,
a wave of shifting colors and hues
I can’t fully grasp.
And when it all goes dark,
there is a small light left.
Like a lighthouse,
it does not need to be large.
It only needs to remain,
to guide me back
to where my journey ends.
“Low Blow”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
I broke my rib cage to mend my heart,
split myself open and found
shattered glass, brittle thorns,
flowers blooming where my lungs should be.
Beauty tangled with disaster.
This is the work I was given.
We are all bones dressed in flesh,
wandering, listening
for proof we are still alive.
The catacombs of my mind run deep,
and I wonder what the living see
when they meet my eyes.
Do they notice the distance I’ve learned to keep?
I built it carefully,
brick by quiet brick,
because the closer you stand,
the harder the fall.
Broken toes.
Bloodied noses.
Love leaves bruises
even when it means well.
I don’t want to regret another breath.
The lessons matter,
but the cycles return no matter what we learn.
To open yourself is to step into a storm,
and my mind is already burning.
Add lightning.
Add sirens.
Even the brave would turn back.
I crawl from the grave where my body rests,
my spirit having wandered places
without names,
searching for the space between worlds.
I know it exists.
I know it’s waiting.
I’d crack another rib
for the chance to stand close,
to share one final dance
before the light becomes too much.
My hands are cold.
My eyes have faded.
The sun rises anyway,
and my body remembers its limits.
So I return to the earth without resistance.
Day exhales into night.
The moon turns its quiet wheel,
and somewhere inside that rhythm
I listen for a way out.
I tread lightly,
holding my breath,
because I know if they hear me now
I’ll never leave this place again.
“Forever Yours”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
When the sun begins to set and all becomes still,
the flowers curl inward,
colors bleeding into gray.
The grass dies beneath fading skies,
and my heart aches in silence.
It’s lonely in this world.
We rise only to fall.
The water swells, bubbles vanish,
and in the end, we drown alone.
When the heart begins to break,
the small things twist into weighty stones.
A glance, a whisper, a fleeting light—
tiny moments that trigger landslides
inside bones already splintered.
As your eyes blur and the sun sinks,
colors flare sharper than before,
fracturing the chest that dares to feel.
Mist coils, luminous and patient,
folding around you like a shroud.
The forest above shifts,
its branches clawing downward,
hands of the lost reaching for what remains.
You try to run.
You try to scream.
The wind swallows you.
The earth swallows you.
Even the shadows whisper
and there is nowhere left to hide.
In the end it doesn’t even matter.
Once the colors fade in, you’ll lose your breath.
Your eyes will gloss over,
your limbs will stiffen.
The blood will clot,
and the brain will eventually stop.
That’s what happens
when the heart begins to break.
“The End”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
Like maggots on a corpse,
I crave control.
I need to know the outcome—
rotting flesh or paradise.
I need the ins and outs, the steps,
the process.
Uncertainty chills me.
Bone-deep.
Not demons.
Not ghosts.
Nothing dramatic.
Just gut-wrenching,
inescapable unknown.
How do you prepare for what you cannot see?
How do you fix what may not even be broken?
I will rot here before they find me.
They’ll say they saw it coming—
the tremors, the wild eyes.
Others will be surprised.
So young.
What could I possibly fear?
The answer is everything.
The ins and outs of all things on this earth—
a look, a smell, a touch, a dream.
They crawl under my skin,
make me want to tear my face from my head.
I can’t control what I do not know.
I want to know.
I need to know.
And I will never know.
Take this flesh of mine
and give it to someone with hope,
because I lost mine years ago.
This fear.
This crushing anxiety.
The dark clouds that never lift.
I need control.
"Appetite”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
Inhuman creature, devoured by sin,
raised in lust.
Seeking love to suffocate the mind.
Fingers trace your neck—snap.
I breathe, I see.
A lifeless form full of desire.
Would you taste my heart?
Rage, bittersweet, desperate.
The rush of skin on skin,
your fingers in my mouth.
Do I bite, or do I fall in love?
When the lights fade and the sun dies,
the moon knows my darkness,
the endless screeching,
crazed howling—you caused it.
Words left marks,
made me repetition—
mindless, aware, unable to stop.
I craved your blood,
my nails tore through flesh.
Passion and exile are the same with you.
Your eyes gold in sunlight,
black in the heat.
Your voice—heartless, smooth as honey.
Do it again, I beg.
Shaken. Broken.
The knife sank deeper, again and again.
Do it. Kill me.
For us. For you.
I’ve changed. I swear.
Nights no longer rest,
wild in fever colors.
My nerves fracture.
I’m on a hunt.
You are the prey.
You spoke with bullets;
I came with an axe.
Rest in pieces.
I’ll devour you until you cease.
Midnight passed, the sunsets died.
My hunger is alive.
Your days are numbered.
Don’t close your eyes—
you’re my appetite.
“The Seen”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
I crawled from the hollow inside your heart—
you could only glimpse me in the shadows,
for I exist beyond human eyes.
I know myself alone.
A million miles between us,
and still, we cannot hide.
I coil between your lungs,
a wounded organ,
rotting flesh,
breathing the pulse of ruin.
We will all fall.
You cannot hide.
I have seen it in the eyes—
the last flicker before collapse,
the tremor before dust.
I have followed too far into the void.
The past shifts, colors bleeding,
haunting the faces I have touched.
I clawed my way from the pit
you left me in.
I have seen the sun die.
I have counted endless ages.
We are all one
between the stars,
phantoms of ourselves,
ghosts wandering the ruins of light.
I find my resting place in your palms.
Whisper farewell,
and I will sing my final song.
We are no more than memory
to the ones we were.
When we crumble to dust,
ashes drift like spirits on the wind.
When the sky settles,
and the moon glares cold,
I will find it—
deep in sorrow,
where finally,
we may close our eyes,
but never rest.
“Two Years”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
It’s midnight.
All I can think about is the number two.
Two.
Two years. Almost.
The walk home from the funeral.
I will always remember it.
Limbs stiff, eyes swollen.
I had never felt so lost.
Never so alone.
Two years.
I passed the graveyard and thought of what it meant.
It wasn’t a stranger’s resting place.
It became the place I wouldn’t visit you.
You are all around me—
and still, out of place.
The sun burned violently that day.
Grass green, trees white with buds.
Golden light spilling over graves.
Cars passed, like nothing had changed.
I don’t smoke, but I lit a cigarette.
Said my goodbyes.
Watched the ember die.
Symbolism sharp enough to pierce the chest.
Life all around me.
You were alive once.
A body with a crooked smile, carrying endless light.
The sun, the breeze, your laughter—
a farewell I wasn’t ready for.
Time passes.
Each sunset I watch, I picture your excitement.
Your bewilderment.
Simple, yet complex.
Bright, full of love.
A love I try to carry forward.
You saw the good in everyone.
Animals, friends, anyone who needed you—
you were there.
Two years is not sixteen.
Sixteen years I knew you, give or take a few.
Memories of the creek, the bugs,
the endless unwanted adventures.
Twenty-one is far from the five-year-olds we were.
But two years ago, you stopped aging.
You became someone I dread speaking of in past tense.
A feeling so vile, so full of sadness.
I’ve accepted you aren’t coming back.
I was told you’re in a better place,
but my mind doesn’t work that way.
I pray you are at peace.
I don’t know where we go when we die,
but all I know is days like this
I wish you were still here.
Cracking jokes that weren’t funny,
your laugh when you couldn’t finish them.
The way you brought so many lives together.
The way your absence tore apart the seam.
I’ve never said goodbye to a friend.
Sixteen years.
A brother lost in a place I cannot reach.
Two years.
Two years.
And you still haven’t come back.
“When We Were Here”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
Blink.
I see you in the dark.
Shadow follows. Always. Watching.
Missing you is a knife in my chest
with every second that passes.
Lights die behind my eyes.
The sunsets rush, burn, fade.
Colors vanish, and so do I.
Night comes.
Demons crawl through my veins.
Why couldn’t it be easy?
Why couldn’t you stay?
A love that never hurts—
I feel only betrayal.
You took the last of us
in a cloud of smoke,
with a bitter fentanyl after taste.
I can’t forget.
I can’t let go.
Fix you.
Fix me.
Fix us.
I repeat it, whisper it,
but it never works.
The world moves,
and I am still here,
trapped in your absence.
I feel you everywhere.
Smoke in my lungs.
Whisper in the walls.
Shadow behind my eyes.
Ghost in every corner.
Gone, yet not gone.
Break completely?
Shatter, splinter, fall apart?
Would it release this storm inside?
Would it finally bring peace—or just more ache?
Your memory tastes like blood.
A bitter after taste.
Every hollow space, haunted.
Every heartbeat, echoing.
I can’t escape it.
I can’t escape you.
Two years. Ten years. A lifetime.
I am still here.
You are still there.
Watching. Waiting.
And I am undone.
“Fright Night”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
I wish I knew how to rid you of your demons.
I wish I knew how to save your soul.
Days like these, I wonder if it’s you I see—
or someone else trapped inside.
I know it’s you.
But do you still love me the same?
Short words. Blank stares.
A chuckle here, a shadow there.
I wish I could see that smile.
I wish I could chase that high.
Days like these, I worry about us.
Are we the same as we were?
The feeling drifts, endless,
in a light I cannot find.
I know you love me.
But you fight yourself.
How do I fight demons
I cannot see?
How do I find your hand
in the flames that consume you?
This fire devours you,
and I am in the smoke.
Let me in.
I’ll bring a river to close the leak
where the blaze feeds.
I’ll ignite the spark
I saw so long ago.
It’s frightful—the unknown.
Late at night I question where we are.
To save us,
to bring you back,
I’d fight your demons,
unleash my wrath.
It would be one hellish night.
To get you back,
it would be
a hell-fright night.
“Lines”
A Poem by Nik Winghart
The tender pulse of metallic.
A slow caress against my skin.
Crimson bubbles rise,
a red line tracing a motion divine.
Biological abstraction.
Watching it drip, like tiny maps of me.
Collisions spark pleasure.
Memories rush in a chromatic wave.
White eyes.
Blurry visions.
It sinks deeper,
pulling me into the depths.
The lines put me in a trance.
Colors bloom in my mind:
Magenta. Violet.
Kind. Violent.
All passes through me.
One more breath—
I’d die with you.
Into darkness.
Lost. Wandering.
Seeking the heartbeat.
Confusion rises.
Lights flare, bright and malevolent.
Water fills hollow lungs.
The night calls me home.
Deeper. Deeper.
Decaying from the inside,
soft velvet on the outside.
Blue lines.
A pathway into the soul.
I will follow it,
through daylight, through shadow.
Take me home.
Pleasure beyond bliss.
Bleed into me.
I am yours.