#bloodstream

I hear him in the way I speak, and when I look in the mirror

The anger’s grown in me and shows, could it be any clearer?

Maybe it was earlier than you think. Earlier than words. Earlier than understanding.

Maybe it started back when your name still got called across a room by a man who looked like he was always one bad day away from breaking something.

Shane Walsh was your father in the way that mattered and the way that didn’t make sense to anyone else. He never stuck around long enough for you to turn childhood into something soft. But he stayed just long enough to leave echoes.

And your mother—

Maggie Greene was the only reason those echoes didn’t become your whole life.

⸻

Maybe you were too young

to fully understand

that’s why you never healed from “the healthy,”

why you never trusted the man.

You grow up thinking love is supposed to feel like waiting for the next shoe to drop. Like silence stretching too long. Like a door closing harder than it should.

And then someone tries to love you right.

And it feels wrong.

⸻

You sit on your bed staring at your phone like it’s something that owes you an apology.

The message is still there.

I hear you. I love you. But I can’t give you what you need.

Your chest tightens like it always does when people get honest instead of staying.

Because honesty, for you, has always sounded like leaving.

Am I too much?

Am I enough?

Your throat burns with it. You don’t even realize you’re shaking until your hand hits your mouth to stop the sound from coming out.

⸻

You gotta love all you have,

and you’ll take that to your grave.

Soon you’ll open up your eyes,

and it will all be gone one day.

That’s what it feels like, anyway. Like everything good is temporary and you’re just stupid for touching it like it’s permanent.

You think about your mom in the kitchen earlier, moving around like she’s learned how to survive loss so many times it’s just muscle memory now.

She never says your father’s name unless she has to.

But you hear him anyway.

⸻

I am my father’s daughter,

but I’m nothing like him at all.

That’s the lie you try to live in.

Because you are like him in the places you don’t want to admit. The anger that flares too fast. The way your voice sharpens when you’re cornered. The way your love turns into fear when it feels like it might not be returned the way you imagined.

You catch yourself in the mirror sometimes and hate how familiar your own expression looks when you’re upset.

Could it be any clearer?

That I’m like him.

And it terrifies you more than anything else ever has.

⸻

You hear him in the way you speak.

Not as a voice, not exactly.

More like a pressure behind your teeth. A warning in your tone. A storm you inherited without asking for it.

And then you remember the door.

Not yours.

His.

Shane punching it until the house felt like it was holding its breath around him.

You were small then. Small enough that you didn’t understand violence as violence. Just as weather.

You never got hurt.

That’s the part your brain repeats like a prayer.

You never got hurt.

And yet somehow, you still learned what it means to flinch before things happen.

⸻

I don’t regret loving you,

because I know that you needed it.

That’s the part you understand now, about your father, even if it took years and distance and grief to get there.

But needing someone doesn’t make them safe.

And being loved by someone doesn’t mean they know how to stay.

⸻

The floor of your mom’s room is cold when you end up there without deciding to.

You don’t even remember walking.

You just remember collapsing.

And suddenly she’s there.

Kneeling like she’s done this before. Like she knows exactly what shape your breaking takes.

“What happened?” she asks, soft.

And you can’t answer at first.

Because the truth is too big and too small at the same time.

He didn’t hit you.

He just didn’t stay.

And somehow that hurts worse.

⸻

And I’m crying on my mama’s floor,

why don’t you want this anymore?

Your voice breaks when you finally say it out loud, like it’s been stuck there waiting for permission.

Maggie doesn’t interrupt.

She just sits beside you and lets you fall apart in pieces that don’t have to make sense.

You’re craving him to change for you,

like love is something you can negotiate into safety.

But you already know how that ends.

You’ve watched enough people try.

⸻

Am I too much?

Am I enough?

The questions don’t get answered. They just echo.

Your mom pulls you closer like she can physically keep the past from taking more of you.

And you realize something in that moment, something that hurts more than it heals:

You were never asking the right question.

It was never are you too much.

It was always:

Why does love feel like something leaving?

⸻

Now I’m numb on my knees,

praying to God you’d talk to me,

wondering what it takes for you to stay off my mind

and far out of my bloodstream.

Because that’s what it becomes.

Not just memory.

Not just heartbreak.

But something in you. Something you carry like inheritance. Like a name you never agreed to take.

⸻

You don’t forgive your father all at once.

You don’t unlearn what he made you feel in your bones.

But you start to understand the difference between what you inherited…

and what you choose to keep.

And on your mother’s floor, in the quiet that finally stops shaking—

you realize you are still here.

Still breathing.