𝕰𝖓𝖘𝖑𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖉 sʇɥɓnoɥ⊥

You say you love me,

but your love is a dim light in a dead house,

flickering, failing, never warm enough

to chase away the cold that settles in my bones.

I reach for you,

but my hands close around air,

around ghosts of affection that never settle,

never stay—

a touch that never lands,

a word that never soaks into my skin.

I am starving in a feast of empty promises,

drowning beneath the weight of what should be enough,

but isn’t.

You love me,

but love should not feel like reaching

for something that never reaches back.

Drafts 1/24

Sister,

there was an ocean quietly rising inside my ribs.

You only saw the shore of me…

sunlight, laughter,

the girl who stood beside you

like the second half of a horizon.

But grief grew deep and tidal.

I held it behind my teeth

until it turned thick as honey

in my throat.

I did not leave

because I loved you less.

I left because you were the softest place

I knew in this world and I could not set the storm down in your hands

If you listen

on the quiet nights,

you might still hear me

in the tide.

Not gone.

Just returned to the deep water

that made me.

I ruin softness the way a storm ruins a quiet field.

The minute life stops screaming,

I start hearing the old echoes of

doors slamming in distant rooms,

ghost-hands pulling me back by the throat.

Good things feel like traps.

Happiness feels like a ceiling getting lower.

So I claw at it,

scratch the paint,

break the glass,

set fire to the place I prayed for,

just so the ruin matches the map in my chest.

It’s not that I hate peace.

It’s that peace never stayed.

And I’m terrified

of loving anything

that might leave me cleaner

than it found me.

there’s a sick kind of gravity

in opening the door to the past.

the way my hands tremble

but still reach for the handle,

like I’m addicted to the bruise.

I tell myself don’t look

but I lean anyway,

pressing my face against

old windows smeared with ghosts,

breath fogging the glass

as if I’m trying to warm something

that died a long time ago.

the memories come fast,

Sharp, metallic, like biting tinfoil.

I flinch

but i don’t stop.

I never stop.

I wade back into the flood

with the stupidity of someone

who knows exactly where the undertow waits,

yet steps forward because the ache is familiar, because the suffering feels earned, because the silence afterward

terrifies me more than the drowning.

and God,

the worst part isn’t the water, or the weight,

or the way my chest tightens as I sink.

It’s the knowledge,

heavy and honest as a stone tied to my ankles:

I filled the ocean.

I opened the vein.

I built the storm and walked straight into it barefoot, shaking, and wanting it to hurt just enough

to feel like truth.

I swore the devil could not reach me.

but he did.

He crawled into the hush of my nights,

into the ache I baptized as peace,

into the rooms where my throat

locked its own doors.

He did not storm the gates.

He did not burn.

He lingered like a prayer

I stopped believing,

a shadow kneeling at the foot of my bed

until my bones learned stillness.

And when I finally sat down

to rest from all my running,

I felt the floor tilt,

my body sinking without hands on me.

No fight. No flame.

Just the slow mercy of drowning

in my own silence.

I never asked for this.

To be chained to your ghost,

to count minutes like rosary beads

worn smooth from waiting.

I never wanted to love you.

God, I hate that I do.

Hate that my heart kneels at your feet

while my mouth spits curses at your name.

I ache like a starving dog

waiting for scraps I swore

I didn’t need.

I want to be free.

I want to peel your fingerprints

from my skin,

burn the places where you touched me,

forget the sound of your voice

that rings like a knife

inside my ribs.

You were wrong about me.

You don’t know me.

And I hate you.

I hate you so much

it feels like love’s rotten twin.

Please.

Leave me alone

before I forget how.

Before I forget who I was

without you.

I won’t let you down,

the words echo like church bells

struck wrong,

a promise bent in half.

I wanted to believe I was enough,

that the curve of my face,

the weight of my body,

the way I cling too tightly,

could be loved.

But I keep wishing myself thinner,

prettier,

softer around the edges

where your eyes cut sharp.

Every glance feels like a scale,

every silence a verdict.

I whisper apologies

for taking up space,

for being the kind of girl

who hopes too loud.

Yes, I will let you down,

not because I want to,

but because I am not the fantasy

you built in your head.

I am only me—

wanting, wishing,

aching

to be enough.

Why can’t you love me?

Say it with the grace of a knife

sliding through overripe fruit.

Let it spill.

I’ll drink it

if it means I would understand.

I tethered myself

to the idea of your hands,

to the ghost of your voice

in empty rooms,

and called it intimacy.

Why am I so attached?

I nest in your silence

like a bird

too broken to migrate,

waiting for warmth

in the frostbitten mouth

of memory.

What is wrong with me

that you recoil from the touch

you once begged for?

Tell me where I soured.

Was it the way I loved;

too loudly,

too much,

too soon?

Or did I simply remind you

of something

you swore you’d never return to?

I would carve the answer

from my own ribs

if I thought it would matter.

But you’ve already

forgotten

my name

in the language

of your peace.

The blade broke skin,

but not memory.

There you stayed,

etched in every nerve

like a name burned into bark.

It didn’t bleed out the ache,

only dulled it

until I forgot

why I was crying.

You kiss like kerosene:

quick, cruel, consuming.

A flashfire kind of love,

no patience for the slow burn.

You spit smoke and sweet nothings,

mouth full of matches,

hands made for wreckage,

not holding.

You call it desire,

but it’s dread with lipstick on.

You flee the moment

something dares to simmer,

too terrified to watch love

settle into coals.

You crave the chaos,

not the comfort.

You light hearts like cigarettes—

only to flick them

into gutters

when the buzz fades.

And still,

you wonder

why nothing

ever stays.

Why does it still sting

when your mouth—so soft with strangers now says you don’t love me anymore?

It’s been eight winters

since your hands left mine to freeze,

but I am still nailed

to the memory of your heat.

You’ve named it friendship.

I call it starvation.

A cruel kindness—

watching you sip from every cup

but mine.

I live in the echo

of what we were,

dragging my ghost like a broken veil

through hallways lined with

your laughter,

your sighs,

your body pressed against doors

you no longer open for me.

You moved on like a tide.

But I?

I am shipwrecked

in the same salt.

When will it stop hurting?

When the marrow forgets your name?

When my dreams stop dressing like you?

Please, I am begging…

how do I bury something

that was never allowed

to die?

I am always aching for a home

I’ve never touched—

not wood or stone,

but a place where my name

doesn’t bleed shame when it’s spoken.

I’ve gutted my body

like a cathedral long-abandoned,

rummaged through bone pews

and bloodstained altars,

hoping some holy part of me

survived the ruin.

but the walls whisper rot.

the mirrors flinch.

and all i ever find

are ghosts of a girl

who once believed

she could be wanted.

Every car that moans down this road, wears your face like a mask made of smoke:

familiar in the dark, and gone by the time I blink.

I press my palm to the window

like it might remember your fingerprints,

but it’s only glass,

and I am only hollow.

The porchlight spills itself open nightly, a desperate thing, spilling yellow like an open wound—

I keep it on like a woman keeps breathing

through labor, birthing nothing but silence…again and again.

I rot in your absence.

Not slowly, but like meat left on summer pavement. Raw, red, open-mouthed. Grief has made a bed inside my marrow, and fuck it hums your name while I sleep with my eyes wide open.

I light candles like I’m summoning you, but the only thing that comes is the ache, slippery and cruel, crawling up my throat like I might vomit your name and get some peace.

You never drive by.

You never check if I’m alive.

But still—

every night

I leave the light on

like a goddamn shrine,

in case your ghost gets lost.

I hate that I love you.

A venom I sip like salvation,

knowing it rots me slow.

I’d rather overdose on silence

than crave your echo,

but the pills dissolve

into ghosts that hum your name

beneath my tongue.

Sleep is a locked door.

And you…

you are the wind rattling the hinges,

etching your memory

into the marrow of my thoughts,

wide awake

and cruelly gentle.

You never left.

You just became the ache

I dream of

with my eyes open.

How many times must I bleed before my body believes it exists?

Not red, but the kind of ache

that peels the soul from its skin—

quiet, intimate,

slow as a church bell mourning nothing.

I offer myself like a room with flickering lights.

Where men come to forget and leave their fingerprints on the mirrors.

They enter me like a question,

leave like an answer I wasn’t holy enough to hear.

Is there something in my scent

that screams vacancy?

Some soft rot beneath my ribs

that makes them

kiss me like a sin and run like I’m fire?

I keep folding myself

into shapes that feel like love;

spine bent,

mouth open,

heart held out like an offering too bruised to be blessed.

What is so wrong with me

that I must be broken

just to be touched,

filthy

just to feel clean?

The sun slithers in

through blinds I forgot to close—

gold slicing the silence where I went still.

The dog noses the door. She doesn’t know that I’m gone.

Outside, a lawnmower growls, slicing through dandelions like nothing sacred just ended.

My mother will find me,

mouth open like I had one last thing to say. She’ll whisper my name like it’s a question God refuses to answer.

And He won’t. He’ll stay silent,

like He always does—

face turned toward someone more salvageable.

The world moves on

in beige and breath,

and that,

more than anything,

is what kills you twice.