spark&ashes

pulled out from the table

inside me.

It has been waiting for years.

Every morning

I straighten the house.

Every night

I leave the light on.

For whom,

I don’t know.

I only know

that some part of me

has never unpacked.

My body arrived.

My life arrived.

But something else

is still on its way.

So I wait.

In traffic.

In queues.

At red lights.

At 2 a.m.

At thirty.

At forty.

At whatever age comes next.

I wait

with the embarrassing faith

of someone who still believes

a knock at the door

can change everything.

The door stays closed.

The years keep entering.

And still,

before sleeping,

I clear a space

for a guest

who has never once

said they were coming.

Most days, her mind feels like an old house after a storm. The furniture is still there. The walls are still standing. But everything sits in the wrong place. She walks through memories the way someone walks through dusty rooms, touching familiar objects and wondering why they no longer feel familiar. Outside, life continues with its usual certainty. Traffic lights change. Friends make plans. Strangers laugh into their phones. The world seems to know exactly where it is going. She watches it from behind a pane of glass only she can see, trying to remember when existing became something she had to consciously practice. Sometimes she catches herself staring at nothing in particular, the way sunlight pools on a pavement, the way leaves gather against a curb, the way rainwater clings to a window, and realizes entire conversations have happened around her without her hearing a word.

People call her quiet, but quiet is not the right word. There is nothing quiet about her mind. It is crowded with unfinished thoughts, old conversations, questions that arrive at midnight and stay until morning. She is carrying versions of herself she has not yet learned how to put down. The girl she used to be. The girl she thought she would become. The girl she is now. They all seem to walk beside her at once. So if she seems distant, if her smile arrives a little late, if her eyes linger somewhere beyond the person speaking to her, it is not because she doesn’t care. It is because she is still learning how to live after falling apart. Still learning how to make a home inside herself again.

I think the frightening part is that I can never catch it happening.

No sharp before. No obvious after.

Just small absences accumulating in corners.

The version of me that replied immediately. The version that laughed more easily. The version that believed rest would be enough.

Gone one strand at a time.

Like a sweater snagged on something invisible, continuing to look whole until the sleeve is suddenly in your hand.

My nipple presses against my knuckle as I type, the laptop pulled so close to my chest it feels less like a machine and more like something I am holding onto. The room is dark except for the glow of the screen. The world has gone quiet. The roads are empty. The windows are black. Somewhere, people are sleeping peacefully beside the lives they built for themselves. And here I am, awake, pouring myself into words because I don't know where else to go.

The strange thing about loneliness is how physical it becomes. It settles into the body. It curls itself into your shoulders. It sits behind your eyes. It turns your own arms into substitutes for an embrace. Tonight, I find myself leaning into a screen, into sentences, into the small comfort of hearing keys click beneath my fingertips. Tap. Tap. Tap. Proof that I am still here. Proof that something inside me is still reaching outward.

There is no one to hold me. No one to tell me the night will pass. No warm chest to bury my face in until my thoughts lose their sharp edges. Just this room, this glow, this restless mind pacing circles around itself long after the world has gone to sleep. I keep writing because words are quieter than tears. Because language asks less of me than hope. Because sometimes arranging grief into sentences feels easier than carrying it unnamed.

Outside, the darkness is calm. Inside, my thoughts continue their low hum, like an appliance that was never switched off. Every memory, every worry, every unfinished fear takes its turn speaking. I wish, more than anything, for silence, not the silence of an empty room, but the silence of a mind that finally feels safe enough to rest. The kind of peace that arrives without being summoned. The kind that lowers itself gently over a person like a blanket.

Until then, there is this. A screen against my chest. My body folded inward. A blinking cursor waiting patiently in the dark. And me, trying to write myself somewhere softer than where I currently am.

that daughters inherit strange things.

My mother’s eyes when she is swallowing words.

My father’s voice after it has forgotten kindness.

And the terrible skill

of pretending dinner tastes the same.

My greatest act of restraint is pretending my heart is a smaller room than it truly is.

I keep dimming the lantern, afraid its brightness will blind you, while secretly hoping you still notice the light.

You are not asking for too little; I am simply arriving with entire seasons in my hands.

I have spent so long worrying that my love might overwhelm you that I never considered how lonely it is to keep an ocean pretending to be a glass of water.

Every time I choose not to reach for you, it is not indifference. It is affection trembling at the edge of its own magnitude.

Love is such a large word,

full of promises people make

before they know what they are promising.

What I need is simpler.

When I fall apart,

I need someone willing to sit on the floor beside me.

Someone patient enough

to gather the pieces without rushing.

Someone who does not mistake broken

for finished.

If I am a puzzle,

I do not want to spend my life

searching for missing pieces.

I want to be whole.

And when I scatter,

as all things eventually do,

I want someone who remembers

what I looked like before the fall.

Someone who does not try to remake me.

Someone who simply helps me