If it's you and me against the world, then I'm against you, since you're my whole world. I hate that. Let's stay in bed together, away from the world, make it song and dance. You say you can't call out of work, but I ask for ten more minutes, as we just cradle each other. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2025

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. But when your mind is trapped in pain, youth can feel like a prison. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2026

Our eyes flicker gold in the depth of the dark, As we each connect via our everbright spark We leveled through trials and grind through our chapters. As we trade the silence for echoed cries and laughters.

And you wondered why I'd stopped falling in love? Or perhaps you simply thought I couldn't be loved. You may be right, but the same goes for you. ~ Benjamin Forrest, 2022

"Who knows? It could just be my amygdala telling me to shut the fuck up and scream, but my hypothalamus just can't be arsed to give a shit." ~ ???, 20??

You can't lock the fuck in when you're locked the fuck out with the keys still inside ~ Benjamin Ray, 2024

As nothing lasts forever, Everything fades, I refuse to let you do the same. Only you could be nothing in my heart, Until my heart is nothing, too. Yet all else disappears from our sight. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2025

I'm not waiting for my life to start for real; I'm in the middle of one of the most successful, from the ground up, comeback arcs the world has ever seen. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2026

The barren emptiness, the indescribable grey sky and earth, the silence save for a desolate wind that doesn’t even have the heart to howl. It just... Sighs.

I survived the summer, and I'll survive the winter. I'll survive ten of them and more for the connection to flourish. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2026

I find myself staring into my own eyes more often than before, seeing the different aspects of me that have experienced all of this life. Sometimes, I look in the mirror to decipher who of me is going on the adventure that particular day.

That dark, beautiful, horrific color won't stop. Flashing, expanding, piercing. Black. Black. Black. Blacker. A meaningless cacophony of endless noise. Not simply an absence of light, but an appetite. A heavy velvet curtain didn't simply hang; it crushed.

Like placing a chalkboard on a turntable Turn it. Like reading a compass inside a magnet Follow it. Like piercing the moon with a thimble Taste it. Like weaving a snowflake through a needle eye Wear it. Like pouring the ocean into a stopwatch Wait for it. Clutch your chest. Cl— ~ Benjamin Ray, 2019

My system is a pair-binder, intuitively designed for connection. While it takes time to power up when it wants to go "mach fustercluck," I'm allowed to love myself BECAUSE I love. The sinking of my sternum is simply love's expansion finally reaching where it needed to: inward. ~ Benjamin Ray, 2026

I wouldn't have let you in If I didn't have a choice

Fear of failure If failure persists, a need for death A craving for death yet terrified of it. Death and dying, afraid. Potential. All has been told of me. Hope is not all I have. But anxiety, depression. My mind wanders. ~ Benjamin Forrest, 2017

The people around tell me I sold my soul to the devil for pennies in my dreams. It makes too much sense when the demons lurk and loiter in my head and at the worst of times scream their bloodcurdling pejorative screams. ~ Benjamin Forrest, July 2019

Whæt, for Sire Axiom was first to die, A dictatorial brain beast seeped through his eye. A four-footed mind, our downfall was wrought, A quantum catastrophe, chaos it brought. Its babe leaped inside his saintly pate, A bellowing curse sealed Axiom’s fate.

Forced to be an outcast of outcasts A life of solitude was the only existence I could see Alone in my abode with thoughts of the near-fatal trauma dealt to me Perhaps you regret my exclusion now You scramble to pick up pieces You become an outcast yourself Unaccepted Yet my pain's understood

I've forever longed to hold you near To chase away all of these fears. I yearn to hear your eloquent voice A beautiful melody, that is my choice.