J.S.S.

The house is quiet

like it forgot my name

Every room is full of ghosts

that never stayed

He wakes up tired of surviving

calls it living, but it feels the same

All the things that kept him human

washed out with the names he couldn’t save

He walks through days like open wounds

smiling just enough to pass

Every memory is a funeral

every future just the past

They tell him time will heal the damage

but time just taught him how to numb

If this is what it means to breathe

he doesn’t know why he’s still doing it

Living feels like suicide

when everything you loved is gone

Every breath just pulls the knife

a little deeper in his lungs

He’s still here, but barely alive

still moving, but already done

Living feels like suicide

when you’re the last thing left to love

He stopped answering the phone

stopped correcting people’s lies

Let them think he’s getting better

he’s just better at goodbyes

Mirrors feel like accusations

every scar a written threat

He keeps asking what’s the point

when nothing good is coming next

Living feels like suicide

when everything you loved is gone

Every breath just pulls the knife

a little deeper in his lungs

He’s still here, but barely alive

still moving, but already done

Living feels like suicide

when you’re the last thing left to love

I BURIED EVERY REASON

I EVER HAD TO STAY

I WATCHED MYSELF DISAPPEAR

AND CALLED IT OKAY

IF THIS IS LIVING

THEN LET IT END

I’M SO FUCKING TIRED

OF PRETENDING I BEND

No more waiting for a sign

no more begging to be seen

If pain is all that’s promised

he’s done negotiating

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt when

Your face changed after what I said

Like words were only passing through me

And not a bullet through your chest

I wore my silence like a weapon

Held the room until it broke

Watched your hands begin to tremble

And acted like I didn’t know

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt when

I made your tears feel inconvenient

Turned your grief into a burden

Just so I could stay defiant

I said I was only honest

Like honesty can’t still be cruel

Like truth in the wrong hands somehow

Doesn’t cut straight through

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt

When I was the wound

Standing there like I was innocent

While bleeding through you

I made pain look like protection

Made distance look like proof

Kept saying I was guarding myself

But I was hurting you

And every time I called it survival

It just made the lie feel true

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt

When I was the one hurting you

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt when

I watched love turn into fear

Saw you measuring every sentence

Before you let it reach my ears

You learned the weather of my anger

How to brace before the storm

And I called that understanding

Instead of seeing what I’d formed

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt when

I became what I survived

Borrowed every ugly lesson

And let it speak for me in fights

The worst part wasn’t what I said

It’s how natural it became

To call destruction self-defense

And never name it by its name

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt

But it lives in every room

In the careful way you loved me

Like one wrong breath could ruin you

Now the silence sounds like memory

And every echo tells the truth

I kept pretending it didn’t hurt

Not becoming harder.

Not becoming colder.

Just becoming less negotiable.

Less willing to trade peace for approval.

Less willing to confuse understanding with acceptance.

Less willing to offer parts of myself on credit and hope they’ll be returned with interest.

Maybe nothing changes.

But sometimes the easiest way to learn what a relationship was built on

Nobody talks about the good in goodbye.

Only the wreckage.

Only the silence after somebody leaves.

But sometimes goodbye

is the first honest thing love ever says.

We kept patching holes in a sinking room

Calling it “hope” because we were scared of the truth

Two tired hearts wearing each other thin

Trying to force forever where it never fit

You carried storms I couldn’t calm

I carried ghosts with clenched-up palms

And somewhere between survival and blame

We forgot love isn’t measured by pain

Every promise started sounding rehearsed

Like actors reading lines at the end of the world

We stayed because leaving felt cruel

Not because staying still felt beautiful

Sometimes letting go

Is the kindest thing two wounded people do

Sometimes goodbye

Is mercy wearing mourning clothes

Maybe the good in goodbye

Is finally setting down the weight

No more bleeding just to prove

How much we were willing to take

Maybe love isn’t always

Two people dying side by side

Maybe sometimes love survives

By knowing when to say goodbye

And I hate that it hurts

But I know why

There was love in us once

That’s the good in goodbye

I used to think endings meant failure

Like if it broke, somebody had to lose

So I kept building homes from apologies

While both of us were burning through

We said forever with shaking hands

Like frightened kids making desperate plans

But forever can become a cage

When fear is the only thing making you stay

I saw pieces of myself disappear

Trying to become somebody easier to keep near

And you looked just as tired beside me

Two strangers begging history not to repeat

And maybe we were never meant

To save each other from ourselves

Maybe the lesson was learning

Love can end without becoming hate

Maybe the good in goodbye

Is finally setting down the weight

No more bleeding just to prove

How much we were willing to take

Maybe love isn’t always

Two people dying side by side

Maybe sometimes love survives

By knowing when to say goodbye

And I hate that it hurts

But I know why

There was love in us once

That’s the good in goodbye

I don’t think we failed.

I think we stayed too long trying to rescue versions of each other

that no longer existed.

And maybe that’s what grief really is—

Not losing someone.

But realizing the future you built around them

won’t happen anymore.

Still…

I’ll always be grateful

we existed at the same time.

Maybe the good in goodbye

Is learning love can change its shape

Not every ending needs a villain

Not every memory has to break

Maybe healing starts the moment

We stop asking who was right

And thank the hands that held us once

Before releasing us to life

And I’ll carry the warmth

Even after the fire dies

Because there was something real here

That’s the good in goodbye

Some people are meant to stay forever.

So. I am the youngest of 6 kids between my mother and father. I grew up in a low income house hold. I don’t have any memories of my mother and father having a happy relationship together. All I know of their relationship was what each side of my family says happened. This makes it hard to believe anything because it was always who did what worse. I was told I was witness to them abusing each other. My father was never conscious when he was home as he was working 11 hour shifts to make money to provide for the house of 8. My mother worked at a hotel( Inn ) as well. How ever she fell into online chatting with people and began talking to someone behind my father’s back. She was not a great mother from what I can remember. Always ignored us children. About a year after she started talking to that guy. I woke up to her packing up my three siblings on her side and packing everything she could fit into the van we had. My mother had us 4 with 4 different men. So my two brothers went with their fathers. My sisters father was in prison so she went with my mother. My mother left me at a house with strangers and told them to call my father. So my sister and her left and moved about 1000 miles away.

My father then came and got me. He took on a job where we was at work even more. My two siblings on my father’s side shared a mother. They both became unruly and disobedient after my mother had left. My dad went through a couple girlfriends. One of them stole from my father while he was at work. The other brought other men over to the house while he was gone. Summer came around 2002. My father needed somewhere for me and his other two children to spend the summer so he could work. Me and the 2 siblings went to spend the summer with their mother who lived 4 hours away. While living there, they were the kind of people to constantly move every time a landlord would threaten them with eviction if they didn’t pay. Also while down there my childhood home had caught fire which prolonged my stay down there. We must have moved 5 times in the 8 months of living with them. My father was now living with my grandmother and begged her to let me move back and stay at her house. This was a couple months before I turned 7. January of 2003 this point. I lived with my grandmother until I was 18. But while there life was not great. I was seen as an angry kid. When I was enrolled in school again things did get better for a while. Until in 4th grade when the bullying began. New kids had moved in down the road from my grandmother and they would make my life a living hell anytime I stepped out the door of my house. This led me to fall into playing video games and staying inside as much as possible. The school did nothing to stop this. They just kept letting it happen.

My mother had tried to reach out to me through letters up to this point but my grandmother kept them from me. I went onto my 6th year of school. So at 11 I really began to start seeing how different I was compared to all of my peers. I was dark minded. Cared very little about myself or others around me. But I stayed to myself and began lashing out at myself. I began wearing elastic bands on my wrist and snapping them on my wrist. This was the year that the bullying stopped though. I had elbowed the bully in the face while getting off the bus causing them a great bit of pain. I forgot to mention. My father was basically absent at this point in my life. He was out of town working 11 months of the year. My depression really took a plummet in my 7th year of school. I had met my first girlfriend. Things seemed great. Had my first kiss with a girl with her. But we had broken up out of nowhere on her terms. I became more self destructive. I took to slitting my wrist with razor blades from pencil sharpeners, shaving razors or anywhere I could find them. I hid this from my grandmother and my father for a year. I had a couple of girlfriends through my 8th grade year but the most notable was one I had never met in person. She was so incredibly kind and caring. She brought warmth back to my heart and made me care about others again. Still in my 8th year of school my mother had reached out to me through “MySpace” and I confided in her about my depression. She then contacted my father who she was deathly scared of and told him. He proceeded to catch me leaving the shower and made me strip my clothes off so he could inspect for any cuts or scare. He didn’t find any but after a couple of months I was caught at school with a multi tool in my pocket and the school guidance counselor found cuts on my wrist. My grandmother made me confess to the priest of her church and took me to see a psychiatrist. Which all this did was taught me how to hide the depression even better.

So now I begin 9th grade of the 12 required years of school here in the us. It is 2009. I started trying to make friends but again was seen as too off or different for people to invest time into. This led to the bullying starting again. And this time much worse. They would throw things at me. Hurt me intentionally. But I stayed quiet and took it. When the few friends I had saw me. They saw a smile and nothing more. I didn’t let them know I was on a path to attempt suicide for the first time. I swallowed a bottle of ibuprofen. But my body threw it all back up. 10th grade came along. At the end of this school year was when I officially started dating my wife the first time. I had seen her before when I was in 7th but never talked to her. When I first saw her was the reason for the nickname I have given her. But back to 10th. That summer her and I had a great time together. I started working as a life guard at my local pool so I could get her in for free. But my 11th grade school year in November I broke up with her. I thought I had my life figured out and I didn’t think she could be part of it without hurting her. I wanted to join the military and I didn’t want her to have to worry about me all the time. But at the end of 2011 I fell deep into the darkness of my mind again and attempted suicide again. This time was from trying to bleed myself out. I didn’t cut deep enough and I didn’t bleed long enough before I chickened out and stopped. February of 2012 I met the girl I wish I had never met. She made my life shatter into complete darkness. She lied to me, abused me physically and mentally. I have scars from her cutting me to this day. This went on until October of 2012 when I caught her in a lie. I blacked out and came too after having punched a wall 11 times breaking my hand. I still dated her after because I was a glutton for punishment I suppose. Until February of 2013. When we broke up. At this point I began focusing on myself. I was still hurting myself. But I was focusing on myself. No more girlfriends. People began respecting me and trying to be there for me. I had no clue how to respond to this sudden support. But I stayed single until I graduated from school and began talking to my now wife again. I only reached out to apologize to her but it became much more very quickly.

When my mother passed away. That side of my family came out of the woodwork and made their existence known hard. I reconnected with all of them on a surface level. I didn’t really know any of them and they all treated me like I had to hear why my mother had left and why it was so important now. This created a feeling of “what had I missed” and truthfully made my internal fighting much more worse. A year or so my sister on my father’s side (yet again a person I was never close to) passed away from pancreatic failure. I did not attend her funeral which made my father furious with me. But I didn’t really care. I was still being dragged between 2 villages and I only wanted peace.

Fast forward back to where I ended yesterday.

My wife and I had dated and rekindled for a few months and then got the news that she was pregnant. I was 18 had a job as a pizza cook and was attending college. I had no clue what I was getting in to but I decided that I wanted to be a part of it. Her and I spent as much time together as we could and started looking for a place to stay and begin our new life together. The day we got the keys to our place I packed up all of my things and moved out of my grandmas house without saying anything. Just put everything I could get into my car in it and left. That evening while trying to get some sleep my father had called at about 23:30-00:00. He laid into me and then hung up. The next day me and her met up with my dad and grandma and I told them about how she was pregnant and that I was trying to do the right thing. All they did was continue to scold me about leaving instead of offering any sort of support. A month after moving out my son was born. Life went by fast. I tried maintaining friends that I had. Tried maintaining work school and home. It never worked out. I ended up dropping out of school two months after my child was born and I took on a job doing oil changes and tires at a big name shop. This helped but still did not make enough money and we struggled. She had finished her school where she studied French baking. This made me jealous. I didn’t show it to her but I was angry. I was part of a concert band that after my child was about 5-6 months old I had to leave. Then another few months later I had to start selling off things that I did as a hobby. I played a card game called “magic the gathering”

I sold all of that off. My wife hadn’t given up anything she did. She only kept adding to the list of things she did. Though she did stop this quickly when funds didn’t allow. Another year past and I had started to get distant and slightly resentful towards my wife. I had stopped hanging out with friends because she and I fought when I did. I gave up on my passion of music because I didn’t have time to keep pursuing it. I stopped playing my instruments because she always had migraines and head aches and my instruments had bothered her. I gave up on hobbies I had because we needed the money elsewhere to just survive. But she still wanted more from me.

This put so much stress on me that I got angry and I did something stupid.

This is where I said I became a villain.

I reached out online trying to find someone that just wanted to have “fun” with. Nothing happened but my wife did find the messages and it created the first huge distrust between her and I. We managed to work through this but no forgiveness was shared. I had gone through a couple more auto repair shops until my wife’s uncle had offered me a job working at his shop. We stayed in that house for about 8 ish more months after this until we decided we wanted to buy a house of our own. We found a house and moved there in 2016. Things were looking up. We decided to get married. August 7 2016. A couple uneventful years had passed where I was still overworking myself to provide. The end of 2017 we decided to try for a second kid. August of 2018 our second son was born. I kept working and taking on side jobs and spending no energy into myself trying to provide for my family. 2019 started and the panic of covid began going around. My oldest was in school and at the end of march the school had shut down. And closed for the remainder of the year instead of at the end of may. This was when I found myself getting the darkest. My wife was also dealing with post partom depression from our second son. I kept everything in and didn’t show her I was getting depressed because I didn’t want to be a burden on her. April of 2019 came and thus began my fall. The girl friend of my best friend at the time reached out to me because she had noticed my depression. Her and I had spoke for a few months and I vented all of my frustrations to her. During this time I tried to reach out to my wife using music to show I was getting to dark to see the light again. My wife’s only response was “what am I going to do if you do something stupid?” After another month I began cutting myself again. I told my wife that it was an accident at work. But I told my friends girl friend all the truth. She seemed to care and that’s what I wanted. Another month had gone by and I was complaining about how I was doing all the cooking and cleaning at the house and that my wife wasn’t doing anything. Which was true. She sat an played on her phone. Then the girl started hinting at how she wished I was available. I fell for it. I had been asked one day to work on her car and that’s when things started. At first it was just kissing. But it became sleeping together. Even inviting her into my own bed while my wife wasn’t home when she took a trip out of town to see her friend. I became cold and heartless towards my wife. The wife and I with our two boys took a camping trip together and I got drunk and confessed to hurting myself. She gave me hell for not talking to her and she gave me an ultimatum to go to therapy or she would leave with the kids to protect them.

I started going to therapy at the end of 2020. I didn’t tell the therapist about the other girl just talked to him about myself and my wife. Months of this had gone by. I had questions about the timing of my wife having our oldest kid and began questioning if he was mine. The other girl encouraged that I did a dna test on him and I. The other girl even paid for it. I found out that the child I had been raising as my own was not biologically mine. I confronted my wife about it and she confessed to having been possibly raped before her and I started dating in 2013. the end of August 2021 came, then I decided I needed to stop with the other girl and focus on my marriage and kids. My wife had found out from another source the very day I intended to tell her. My wife attacked me. Hit me yelled at me and made me break in front of her so she’d see remorse from me or because she wanted to hurt me.

I came clean to my therapist as well. Another year of trying to recover from this had passed. My wife and I still struggling to fix what had been broken by me. And I thought I had gotten to a point where I no longer needed therapy. So I stopped. 2024 August came and at the end of the month my wife came to me saying someone had made advances at her at her work. She said he apologized to her and this all stoped. September 3 I had an anxiety attack. I grabbed her phone and found deleted messages between them where she had offered him sexual favors and that it was her that initiated the advances. I tried to calm myself and lay down. But I had accidentally pulled the blankets off of her and woke her up. She noticed I was not ok and asked. Which led me to confront her. The only thing she did was say I abused her by waking her up. She didn’t apologize. Just defended her actions as if nothing wrong had happened. The next day I told her I wanted to seek couples counseling. I found a counselor as well as I reached back out to my own. We started going. Over the time period of September 3 to march 3. She had been lying to me and giving me hell about talking to him. She said she wasn’t but was. And I kept catching her. But she said that she wasn’t going to stop being friends with him. Then march 2nd my birthday I found that she was talking to him again and trying to hid it knowingly that I would be angry about it. We fought until 02:00 from 20:00 the day before. I thought this had ended. I made hr message the guy calling it off and her work found inappropriate messages between them on their work chat. Her work threatened her with losing her job if she didn’t stop talking to him. Well she found another way of talking to him and I found that she was once again hiding sexual messages again between them. I became the very angry person I had never wanted to be again. I confronted her and yelled and screamed and cried and corned her in the house making her hear everything I had to say and had been biting my tongue on. She shrank. Then she decided to combat it. This was when I lost my temperament completely. I told her I wasn’t going to live a life without her and I reach under the bed pulled out my pistol and was raising it to my head when I saw her fear of losing me set in. I dropped it immediately and broke down. The next day I got all firearms out of the house and spoke with my therapist about the event. This is what led me to getting prescribed anti anxiety meds and anti depressants. I have been better since that night and she has been honest about not talking to the guy anymore. The relationship is growing again. But now we are dealing with all of this.

I can be the bad guy, if that’s what helps you sleep at night

I’ll wear the shadows you painted on my shoulders,

I’ll be the reason you’re alright

If it’s easier to see me through the crosshairs

Of every word you couldn’t say

I’ll be the one across the battlefield, sword in hand—

Even if I never come to fight your way

You can tell it how you want to, to the neighbors or your friends

Let them see the story you survived

Let them never know how much I tried

You can leave out all the times that I begged for something simple—

Just to be seen, just to be held

You can tell them how I hardened, how I turned into the villain

But you don’t have to tell them how it felt

You can blame me for the thunder

You can call me every storm

I’ll carry every fault line, be the crack in every wall

I’ll let you love your version

Let you hold onto the peace

If you need me standing on the other side,

I promise I won’t reach

I can be the bad guy, if that’s what lets you love me

You don’t have to remember how I trembled

Or the nights I couldn’t sleep

You can let your anger build a legend

Where I’d rather fall upon the sword

Than ever use it on you—

I’ll be silent, I’ll be small, I’ll be wrong for you

I can carry every story,

Wear the black hat, play the part

If it means that you find mercy

Somewhere deeper in your heart

I can be the bad guy,

If that’s the only way you know

I’ll love you from the distance

My life has been the inspiration for my writing. I don’t claim to have been through a lot but the weight I’ve faced in my life has been enough to fold most people in half.

My first memorable piece for me was the one I wrote when I got back into writing after a hiatus.

I call it “Black hat”

My first true inspiration years ago was family issues. But getting back into writing my inspiration was the pain I was experiencing when someone I held very close to me decided that I needed to suffer for mistakes I had made years before they decided to do what they did. They blamed me for their choice to cheat and told me that it was going to happen regardless of how I felt about it. For A year I was told that nothing was happening but every step of the way I knew I was being lied too. All while their friends and family cheered them on for what they were doing.

Everybody says the smile looks genuine.

Like peace finally found a place to settle in.

Nobody notices the weight behind the grin,

or how practiced every answer has become.

Every laugh lands right on cue.

Every “doing fine” sounds honest too.

A masterpiece of looking whole,

while carrying a war nobody knows.

How many miles exist

between giving up

and waking up tomorrow?

How many moments

can a heart survive

balanced on that wire?

Dancing with the almost,

singing every word aloud.

Looking like another face

disappearing in the crowd.

Every sunrise feels borrowed.

Every sunset feels earned.

Still reaching for tomorrow

while the whole world turns.

A melody too bright

for lyrics this blue.

A heart still beating,

even when it forgets

what it’s beating toward.

The battle isn’t loud.

It rarely raises its voice.

It simply asks the same question

over and over again.

Would anybody notice?

Would anything really change?

Would every empty chair

eventually lose its name?

Then comes another memory.

Another song.

Another laugh that refuses to disappear.

Enough to postpone forever

one more night.

Nobody knows

what waits beyond the final page.

Maybe nothing.

Maybe everything.

Every answer belongs

to someone who never returned

to tell the story.

Until then…

Another sunrise.

Another chorus.

Another chance

for the music to outlast the silence inside the room.

Dancing with the almost,

feet refusing to stand still.

Finding tiny reasons

stronger than the climb uphill.

Hope may wear thin,

but it hasn’t disappeared.

Another verse gets written.

Another dawn appears.

The ending keeps waiting.

Tonight,

the song doesn’t.

The final chord lingers.

The drums fall away.

The voice disappears before the music does,

leaving the last melody

Cradled is too generous a word for where it started. I arrived where love was measured by convenience, where affection could disappear for weeks without anyone wondering what it cost a child. Home became a place that taught me to read the weather in other people’s faces before I learned to read books. Every apology belonged to the smallest person in the room, every burden somehow found shoulders that had barely learned to carry a backpack. Looking back now, with more years behind me than ahead of me, I still wonder who that little boy might have become if someone had looked at him long enough to convince him he was worth remembering.

Pieces of me kept disappearing as I grew older, traded away for acceptance that never lasted. The first people I trusted with my heart discovered how easily it could be bent into whatever shape benefited them. One voice convinced me that every accusation was proof I deserved punishment, that every cruel word was somehow earned. I became so convinced pain belonged to me that I started carving evidence into my own skin, mistaking injury for relief because relief was the only thing that arrived afterward. I carry those faded lines today like the rings inside an old tree—not because I miss that version of myself, but because surviving him deserves to be witnessed.

Then adulthood arrived wearing promises it never intended to keep. I loved with everything I had because I had spent my whole life believing that giving enough would finally make someone stay. Instead, I collected relationships that taught me grief in different dialects. Even the woman I built a future beside convinced me that her betrayal somehow began with my shortcomings, and I accepted that sentence because blame felt more familiar than innocence ever had. It took years to understand that another person’s choices were never mine to carry, though I still catch myself reaching for guilt the way old injuries predict the rain.

Still, the strangest part of growing older is realizing that healing is less like climbing a mountain and more like learning to breathe after spending decades underwater. The child who expected abandonment still lives somewhere inside me. The teenager who believed suffering was proof of devotion still whispers. The man who confused endurance with love still occasionally mistakes silence for peace. But I have outlived every version of myself that was certain tomorrow would never come, and there is something quietly defiant about that. Every scar became a sentence saying, you made it one more day, until one day became years.

I could disappear tomorrow and most of you wouldn’t even realize I was gone. Not because you hated me. Not because you wanted me gone. Simply because you’ve already grown comfortable with my absence while I’m still standing in the room. I became background noise years ago. The texts got shorter, then stopped. The invitations disappeared. The conversations became obligations instead of excitement. Somewhere along the way I stopped existing as a person and became someone everyone assumed would always be there. You don’t notice something disappearing when you’ve already stopped looking at it.

The funny part is that everyone will swear they cared. They’ll tell stories about how much I meant to them. They’ll say they wish they had reached out more. They’ll shake their heads and wonder how nobody saw the signs. They’ll act like this came out of nowhere. They’ll convince themselves they were victims too. That’s the fucking miracle of guilt. It has an incredible ability to rewrite history into something easier to live with.

You’ll stand there dressed in black pretending grief somehow erases neglect. You’ll hug strangers and tell them how close we were. You’ll repeat memories so polished they barely resemble the truth anymore. Every word will sound rehearsed because, whether you realize it or not, you’ve been practicing those excuses for years. “Life got busy.” “We just drifted apart.” “I thought they were okay.” No. You had time. You found time for everyone and everything else. You just didn’t think I was worth spending any of it on.

And that’s the part you’ll never admit out loud because it makes you look exactly like what you are. It wasn’t ignorance. It wasn’t bad timing. It wasn’t some tragic misunderstanding where everybody barely missed each other. It was convenience. I was convenient. I was the one who answered the phone. The one who drove across town. The one who listened for hours. The one who remembered birthdays. The one who checked in first. The one who forgave the silence every single fucking time because I kept believing there had to be a reason. I kept making excuses for people who never once made an excuse for leaving me standing there by myself.

I spent years defending people who wouldn’t defend me. I’d tell myself they were overwhelmed. They were tired. They were dealing with something. I’d bend over backwards trying to explain away behavior that should have told me everything I needed to know. The truth wasn’t complicated. I just refused to believe it because accepting it meant admitting that people I would’ve bled for wouldn’t even inconvenience themselves enough to ask if I was still breathing. That realization hurts a hell of a lot more than loneliness ever did.

You know what really pisses me off? It isn’t being forgotten. It’s knowing that some of you are going to hear this and immediately start trying to figure out whether I’m talking about you instead of asking yourselves why you feel so fucking nervous. That’s guilt. That’s your own conscience pulling at your sleeve. If your first instinct is to become defensive instead of reflective, maybe that’s because some part of you already knows exactly where you stood while someone else was falling apart.

Don’t give me your speeches. Don’t give me your flowers. Don’t stand there pretending tears can rewrite years. Tears are cheap. Regret is cheap. Anybody can cry after the damage is done because by then there’s nothing left to sacrifice. Real love costs time. It costs effort. It costs uncomfortable conversations. It costs choosing somebody when there’s nothing in it for you. That’s the bill almost nobody wanted to pay while I was still around.

You don’t get to become the hero of my story after refusing to be a supporting character in my life. You don’t get to rewrite the script because the ending makes you uncomfortable. You don’t get to tell people how much I mattered when your actions spent years arguing the exact opposite. Every unanswered message. Every canceled plan. Every empty promise. Every “we should get together sometime” that both of us knew was never going to happen. Those were your eulogies long before anyone ever stood over a grave.

And the fucked up part is that you’ll probably believe your own lies. You’ll convince yourselves you did everything you could because that’s easier than admitting you watched somebody slowly disappear in plain sight. You didn’t lose me overnight. You lost me one ignored conversation at a time. One forgotten invitation at a time. One empty promise at a time. Piece by piece until there wasn’t enough left of me to recognize.

You say you know my story, like I whispered straight to you

You paint your perfect version, with those colors you choose

I hear them tell the others, all the things I’d never say

You build your conversation out of words I never made

If you’re gonna draw my picture, let it look a little true

Don’t fill in all the spaces with the lines I never knew

It’s always someone’s whisper, a headline in their eyes

Twisting up my reasons, signing off with my disguise

I catch myself explaining things I never even thought

It’s funny how your fiction starts to tangle what I’ve got

If you’re gonna play the playwright, carve a little heart in clay

Don’t write me as a villain just because it’s your escape

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

Don’t just call me cruel and cold, or careless and evasive

If you need a little drama, make it worth the price

But don’t forget the longing, and don’t forget the light

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

At least make it poetic, if you can’t make it right

I know it makes you lighter with my shadow at your feet

You fill in all the silence with the lies you think you need

But I won’t hold your stories, I won’t play your paper doll

You can keep your little legend, I don’t need it at all

If you’re gonna write my ending, give it something true to say

Don’t just use my silence to erase me all away

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

Don’t just call me hard to love, or stubborn and abrasive

If you’re building up your fable, make it worth the fight

But don’t forget the longing, and don’t forget the light

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

At least make it poetic, if you can’t make it right

I’ll take the mess you’re making, and turn it into song

I’ll wear the names you give me, but I know where I belong

You can write your version, but I’ll always know my own

You can change the story, but I’ll never be alone

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

Don’t just make me simple, don’t just make me jaded

If you need a little story, let the truth ignite

But don’t forget the longing, and don’t forget the light

If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, you better get creative

At least make it poetic, if you can’t make it right

Say whatever helps you, I’ll just sing it through