#crmsnmth

everything smells like bleach again sharp, sterile, unforgiving like someone tried to scrub a life out of the walls

I stand in the middle of it hands empty like I misplace a future and can't remember where I set it down

There used to be something here laughter in the sink your voice caught in the curtains a dent in the mattress that still remembers your shape better than I do

now it's just white too white like a lie pretending to be clean

they say starting over is a chance a fresh page a clean slate

but no one talks about how bleach doesn't just clean it erases

and I'm terrified that if I scrub hard enough there will be nothing left of me worth remembering

so I stand here breathing in chemicals and ghosts

inhale

wondering if starting over just means more learning how to disappear more quietly this time

I wonder if I still exist in the quiet corners of your day not the loud, obvious moments but the in-between ones where memory likes to sneak in uninvited

Like when a song plays we never admitted to love or when the air smells like rain and something in you almost remembers why

Do you ever almost say my name by accident? catch it at the last second like a falling glass heart racing for no one to see

I think about you in the smallest ways how you held your coffee how your laugh always started too loud like it couldn't wait to exist

And it makes me wonder if I haunt you like that too

Or if I've faded into something softer a blur a lesson a "once upon a time" you don't revisit anymore

Do you ever lie awake with nothing in particular on your mind and somehow I slip in anyway

Or am I only alive like this on my side of the world breathing aching asking questions that don't echo back

I don't need to be everything again I don't even need to matter much

I just wonder if somewhere for even a second

I hate you in the way flame hates oxygen dependent devouring impossible without it

You love in the softest parts of me like a splinter I refused to pull because pain felt better than empty skin

I hate the way your name still fits into my mouth like it belongs there like a prayer I don't believe in anymore

You built a home within my chest then lit matches just to watch it burn and I stood there warming my hands on the wreckage telling myself it was love

I hate how I'd still answer if you called at 12:53 AM voice cracked apologies spilling like cheap liquor I'd drink every word and pretend it didn't poison me

Because loving you was always a slow suicide romanticized self-inflicted beautiful in the worst ways

The bottle sits heavy in my hand a prescription I wrote for myself in the quiet hours when the world felt too loud to survive sober

I pour it slow watch it catch the light like liquid amber fire I tell myself it’s just a drink just a ritual just a way to numb the corners of a mind that won’t stop circling

The room sways gently or maybe it’s me the ceiling tilts like it’s leaning in to listen to the seconds I haven’t shared with anyone

Glass to lips I taste relief and regret at the same time A bitter medicine that promises comfort and delivers nothing but a slower heartbeat a heavier chest

I laugh at nothing I cry at everything the music in my headphones feels like someone else’s life bleeding into mine

And I know I know its temporary a borrowed calm that won’t last past sunrise but for now this liquid warmth is enough

I call it medicine I call it survival I call it everything I can’t say out loud

After you, there was her not the storm, not the fire, not the recklessness that haunted my nights and left my chest aching she was quiet at first a soft voice, easy laugh the kind of warmth that doesn’t scorch but filled the hollow spaces you left behind

I held her because my hands were empty because your memory was too loud to ignore because I was tired of tracing shadows that belonged to someone else she fit neatly where you had shattered and I let her because letting someone in felt safer than staying alone with your ghost

But she wasn’t you and I could feel it in the small things how her lips didn’t taste like the chaos I craved how her eyes didn’t know the weight of the nights I spent missing you she laughed, and I smiled but my heart whispered your name between the beats a silent rhythm she could never follow

She knew, too new the flicker in my eyes that betrayed what I really wanted knew how my hands lingered on empty space beside her because they still reached for you

We were a temporary fire burning in borrowed heat bright but shallow a hollow echo of something real and when the nights ended I was left with her absence and your memory knowing that the space she tried to fill was never hers to claim

She laughs at something small a cracked joke, a passing care the way the night smells like rain on hot pavement and I nod like I'm there with her like I'm inside the moment instead of standing just outside it looking in

Her hand finds mine like it belongs there warm, certain, undeserving of doubt and I let it stay because pulling away would mean explaining why my chest feels crowded with someone who isn't here

There's another name I never say out loud anymore but it lingers in the shape of silence between us in the pauses where I should be speaking in the way I study her face like I'm trying to convince myself this is enough

She deserves a better version of me one that doesn't compare her laugh to a ghost one that doesn't measure her touch against memory

But I'm here half-present, half-haunted kissing her like I mean it while my mind drifts somewhere else to a different room a different night a different girl who doesn't even think about me anymore

And that's the worst part not the lying not the distance not even the quiet guilt

I walk alone through neon rot boots chewing gum off broken sidewalks every streetlamp flickers like it knows my name and hates me for it

Jacket stitched with bands that never made it threads hanging like unfinished sentences no one asks what they mean no one listens long enough

I learned early crowds are just lonely people pretending louder

So I keep my volume low let the feedback scream for me let the guitar cry the things I choke on

Friends come like cheap cigarettes burn fast leave bitter and disappear into the wind

I sit on curbs at 2 AM talking to nothing but the nothing talks back and it's more honest than most

they say "You'd be happier if you tried" but they don't understand

This isn't sadness this is structure this is concrete poured around a pulse

I am a loner not by accident but by design a one-man riot with no audience

And maybe that's the point

because when the world goes quiet and the last train screams past

It feels like for a second

It didn't arrive like thunder no breaking sky, no warning bell just a quiet shift in the room like dust deciding where to settle

You were mid-sentence, I think laughing at something small, forgettable and I was watching your hands trace meaning through the air like they'd done a thousand times before

That's when it slipped in not loud, not urgent just a soft, undeniable truth taking a seat beside me

I remember thinking how strange it was that your voice felt like home before I ever noticed I was lost

Nothing about you changed same crooked smile same way you looked away when you thought too hard

But something in me finally caught up

And suddenly every moment before that one rearranged itself like scattered pages binding a story I hadn't realized I was writing

I didn't say anything how could I?

Love, it turns out isn't always confession sometimes it's just a realization that it's already been there longer than you're ready to admit