Double Exposure

In Dialogue with Ag0ny

This piece is a little different than my usual. 
This is a collaborative effort. 
Ag0ny wrote the first poem. 
(Name tagged below b/c I don’t like how this looks without the poetry option)
I wrote a reply. 
I hope you enjoy my friend’s art as much as mine❤️
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You say the light falls straight. I see it broken.

We stand in the same room but the walls
are different animals. Yours purr. Mine bare their teeth.

I hold my truth like a shard of mirror,
it cuts my palm but I cannot let go.
Blood wells up, factual as morning.
You do not see it. You see my empty hand.

Your truth is a clean white room.
Mine is the same room, but the white is a scream.

We are twins born facing opposite directions,
each insisting the other came out backward.

When I say wound, you hear myth.
When you say light, I taste smoke.

The air between us is thick with our separate gospels.
We preach to the walls. The walls do not choose.

I need you to see what I see; 
this hunger is a second heart, and it is starving.
But you are just as hungry. Just as convinced
the food is on your plate, not mine.

So we sit at the same table, both dying of different thirsts.

Your truth is a door I cannot open.
Mine is a door you insist was never there.

We are the double exposure:
two faces on one negative,
both real, both ruined by the other's light.

I want to claw my way into your eyes,
live there, see what you see;
even if it kills the thing I know.

But knowing does not yield.
Truth is not merciful. It does not compromise.

It simply is; and is....and is again,
in two bodies, two mouths,
splitting the same silence into opposite cries.

We will not reconcile.
We will die on our separate hills, righteous and alone,

each holding a piece of the same shattered thing,
calling it whole.



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Light couldn’t run a perfect line if you saw it.

Its path—always full of twists and turns. 
Just to reach your eye it has to turn twice— off an object and again upside down. 

Maybe you’re right.. I’m known to be blinded by light; But I promise next time, your hand will find mine and I’ll help blur the lines I let build up—like walls between us. 

And I’ve always found white paints too haughty a scene—and it’s so hard to clean..
But it makes a great screen.. 
to display things once unseen…

Yes, I saw you flinch, felt you pull away with stiff wrist.. the scene remiss—
I’m sorry, I should’ve listened better..

I thought the problem was you—
Really tunnel vision split in two. 

But as perfect as you—portray my palette,
There’s a pan empty as open ballot..
Your name missing—the one I’d pick. 

There’s no point writing it in,
I’ve led you away with my sin; 
Votes only add up when—
yours isn’t the only one on record. 

But I’m turning the tides—seeing through new eyes. 

I don’t need my door’s lies, 
—if there’s not room for two. 

And we’ll take new pictures then!
Adjust exposure—account for the bends
Of light traveling deep within..

There’s fresh room in my skin. 
Sometimes survival’s slaying and crawling on in—the belly warmer than ice. 

Our pictures aren’t perfect—my heart still yearning, for us to cross the line. 

The one between your mind and mine; bordering flesh and starting fights. 
I’m coming home—let’s end the screaming. 

From your heart to mine, you’ve shattered through rhyme—
and reason. 

Please don’t give up hope—
I have a new approach,
I’m sorry it took

So fucking long. 

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ag0ny thank you for the beautiful work❤️