i’ve stitched gold thread into the edges of every wound just to keep walking.

without it, the world is teeth.

people are knives.

time is a room with no windows.

i see beauty like a starving man sees bread.

desperate. grateful. suspicious.

i fall in love with the way someone looks at the floor when they’re thinking.

the crack in a voice.

the moment before the music starts.

i give everything to that moment.

i give me.

and i pay for it.

no boundaries, i surrender.

i become a house with no locks and wonder why i keep getting robbed.

i call it love when it’s longing.

connection when it’s codependence.

fate when i can’t face the fact that i invented all of it.

idealism is a slow poison.

it tastes like hope.

it starts eating my ribs from the inside.

i chase what doesn’t want me.

i crash into silence and call it destiny.

i drown in stories no one else is telling.

depression is not a fog. it is a fucking god.

that speaks in absolutes.

you are nothing. you were always nothing.

and i obey.

i disappear.

pour a drink.

break into something no one will see.

flirt with danger because it listens.

but.

but.

there’s a part of me that doesn’t die.

it hides in notebooks and late night sentences.

it sketches escape routes in the margins.

it finds meaning in broken things.

it builds a shrine out of ruin and calls it art.

i worship tragedy.

shakespeare’s lovers, dostoevsky’s broken men, forgotten songs that sound like bleeding.

and i collect suffering like artifacts.

hold them to the light.

looking for the beauty in their bruises.

feel for the ones who’ve been emptied.

the quiet kids. those that flinch when you say their name.

the ones who laugh too loud and love too hard and leave before you can.

i don’t just see them.

i am them.

and still

i make promises

that i will never leave you

when i have already left.

my god demands

that i sacrifice still.

still calls me nothing

i give.

i disappear.

i call that devotion.

but even in the silence,

some small part of me

keeps writing.

keeps waiting.

keeps

watching

the door.