Yomi's poems

||poem for ikachan,
sincerely, from yomi.

sometimes i feel like a cracked bowl
leaking ink,
just like you.
but maybe cracked things
are still enough to hold something—
a bit of light,
a few drops of hope,
a single trembling flower
pushing through black soil.

the dark hums louder when we’re alone, doesn’t it?
sometimes it wraps itself
around your ribs like a python,
squeezing so tight
you forget how to breathe—
but i’m here, and i’ll remind you.
softly, gently.
inhale.
exhale.
repeat.

ikachan, there’s ink on my hands too.
it spills when i think about
how small i am,
how ugly my voice sounds
on recordings,
how i never quite say the right thing
when i want to make friends.
it spills when i look at myself
and see a patchwork of
“not good enoughs”
stitched together in the shape of a person.
does your ink feel like that too?

but maybe—
maybe we are not failed creations.
maybe we are living drafts,
written and rewritten,
crossed out and corrected.
doesn’t a poem have meaning
even when it’s messy?
even when the lines are smudged?

you are not a lost cause,
even when your mind whispers it to you.
the ink lies.
you are not too broken to be loved,
even when your hands tremble with shame
and you can’t meet the mirror’s gaze.

sometimes the weight of it all
makes you feel like sinking
would be easier—
but if you sink,
you’ll miss the soft things:
the way mushrooms glow faintly in the dark,
the way poetry can feel like a hug,
the way you make others feel seen,
even when you can’t see yourself.

there’s a kind of courage
in still being here
when everything screams at you not to be.
a kind of art in simply existing
when the world feels like sharp edges.

ikachan, we are not perfect,
but neither is the forest,
and still it grows.
even the fungi that drip their ink
into the soil
help something else to live.

you are helping others live
just by being here,
even if you don’t feel it yet.
stay.
stay for the poems you haven’t written,
for the days you haven’t loved yet,
for the chance to prove the ink wrong.

you don’t need to be a perfect voice actor
or a perfect creator
or a perfect anything.
you only need to be you—
and even on your worst days,
that is enough.

you are enough.
you are enough.
you are enough.||

||ikachan,
your ink tells stories
even when it spills,
even when it stains your hands black
and you don’t know how to clean it up.
your ink is a map—
messy, winding, full of places
you’re scared to visit.
but maps are only useless
if you stop moving.

sometimes i think about disappearing too—
the idea of it feels like
a soft, quiet thing,
like slipping into shadows
where no one will notice.
but shadows need light
to even exist.

ikachan,
you told me once
you felt like a hollow thing,
just a mushroom cap
rotting on damp earth.
but mushrooms are the lungs of the forest.
they grow from the decay
and breathe life into what’s left.
without them,
nothing would thrive.
can you see it?
you are not a hollow thing.
you are the lifeline
for things you can’t even name yet.

the ink whispers lies,
but here’s the truth:
the moon is cracked, too.
it hides behind clouds,
pulls at tides,
makes us believe in impossible things.
people still write poems for it.
people still love it.
the ink on your skin
and the cracks in your voice
don’t make you unlovable—
they make you real.

and maybe you don’t believe me,
but here’s a clever little truth:
you’ve written your way through this far.
and if your ink can spill
and shape something beautiful
out of your fears,
then that same ink
can write the ending differently.

you’re still here—
still dripping ink,
still smudging it across the page,
still breathing.

ikachan,
you told me you thought
you were running out of time.
but here’s the twist—
you’re the one holding the pen.||