anna

i’d flirt but I'm too busy grieving a fictional character from 1874.

i saw a flower growing through the sidewalk. it didn’t ask permission. just bloomed.

no i can’t "just relax". i have to sit by the window with a book i don’t understand, listen to Chopin, and pretend i’m recovering from a Victorian illness.

me: i want to feel alive also me: puts on a turtleneck. walks into a library. sighs deeply. as if I had just lost a lover in 1892.

i think my heart was made for slow things. tea that takes time. stories that don’t rush. people who don’t ask "why are you so quiet?" as if quiet is a flaw.

i talk to myself but not in words. more like... glances at the ceiling, half-formed thoughts, a song i hum but never finish.

Healing wasn’t loud. It looked like getting out of bed and brushing her teeth without crying.

She failed. Got up. Didn’t hate herself for it.

He looked in the mirror and didn’t flinch. Progress.

Go back for the version of you that no one came for. Hold their hand. Let them cry. Tell them, "We made it. I’ll never leave you again."

She had poems stitched inside her lungs. But the room only listened to those who yelled.

Some mornings she woke up and didn’t remember what she was trying to become.