a canvas stretched wide,
bathed in sun and light,
the air alive with motion.
They swim in the rhythm of waves,
their bodies weightless,
their laughter endless.
But I am still.
Still as stone,
bound by a body
that feels like it isn’t mine.

Their eyes—
arrows, silent but sharp,
cut through the fragile armor I wear.
Each gaze slices deeper,
each glance whispers a truth
I cannot escape:
“You don’t belong.”

The thought of the water haunts me.
Its surface a mirror I dare not face,
its depths a question I cannot answer.
To strip away these layers,
to stand exposed,
feels like peeling flesh from bone.
I imagine their stares—
unrelenting,
unyielding.
The weight of their silence crushes me.
I can’t breathe here.
Not like this.

I stood on a podium once,
but it felt like a stage.
The cheers wrapped around my throat,
their applause thundered in my chest.
I smiled,
because that’s what they wanted,
but my legs trembled
beneath the weight of their eyes.
Every look was a blade,
every smile a mirror.
I wanted to run,
but there was nowhere to hide.

Inside, a war rages.
“You’re too much.
You’re not enough.
You don’t deserve to be seen.”
The words etch themselves into my skin,
leaving scars I can’t show.
This body is a house of shattered glass,
each shard reflecting the person
I cannot become.

My hands scratch at my arms,
as if I could claw my way out,
as if this skin were a suit I could shed.
My leg bounces,
my breath falters.
The air feels sharp,
too heavy to swallow.
I close my eyes,
wishing myself into nothingness.
To vanish—
to be unseen, untouched.

The thought of their company terrifies me.
Every move I make feels wrong,
every step a mistake.
The fear pulls me under,
its grip unrelenting,
its weight unbearable.

I sit here,
watching the world drift by,
its colors bright and blurred.
The waves rise and fall,
but I remain still,
a stone sinking quietly into the earth.
I don’t want to swim today.
Not today.
Not with this body
that anchors me to a depth
I cannot escape.

It aches.
A quiet, endless ache.
Each second stretches longer than the last.
But somewhere—
beneath the weight,
beneath the fear—
there is a whisper:
“Not today, but maybe someday.”

Perhaps one day,
this body will be a garden,
and not a battlefield.
Perhaps one day,
I will stand in the sun,
whole and unbroken.
But today, I sit here,
with this fear,
with this body,
learning to breathe,
learning to live.
And I try to believe
that even this—
even this—
will not last forever.

12 hours, and the silence swallows me whole.
I sit here, waiting for a version of you
that feels farther away with every passing second.
You are not here,
though my heart breaks in your name.
A fleeting moment is all you give me—
a borrowed evening,
just enough to keep me afloat,
but never enough to pull me
from the undertow.

12 hours of stillness,
each minute stretching like an ocean,
waves of absence crashing over me.
You choose distance,
choose tasks that keep your hands busy,
your mind distracted.
And I?
I am left to hold the weight
of this emptiness alone.
12 hours—and I wonder
how it feels to become invisible,
to watch myself fade
into the edges of your thoughts.

12 hours, and each breath feels borrowed,
shallow, strained.
The air around me thickens,
pressing against my ribs—
a quiet suffocation
that fills the space where you are not.
The walls grow colder,
the room heavier,
until I am no longer solid.
I dissolve into this silence,
tears carving rivers down my skin,
my body crumbling
beneath the weight of your absence.

Curled against the void,
I trace the cracks in the ceiling,
searching for answers
you cannot give me.
You say you cannot stay,
your mind too full,
your world too heavy.
And yet, you love me—
or so you say.
But your love feels like water slipping through my fingers:
something I cannot hold,
something that leaves me dry and aching.
You love me in fragments,
and I cling to every shard,
even as they cut me open.

12 hours, and I am a flicker
on the edges of your world,
a placeholder in a life
you’ve already rewritten.
While you chase peace,
I am swallowed by the shadows you leave—
they stretch wide,
cold as winter’s breath.
12 hours, and I lose myself
to the silence you’ve wrapped around us.

I give you these hours—
a gift I cannot afford to offer.
Time, so heavy in my hands,
slips through the cracks of this endless waiting.
I give you space
to heal the parts of yourself
that pull you away from me,
even as I break in the seconds
that stand between us.
12 hours where I try
to keep breathing,
to keep existing,
to keep holding on,
without the warmth of your hands,
the steadiness of your voice,
the anchor of your love.

12 hours, and the clock ticks slow as grief—
two minutes stretched into lifetimes.
I am unraveling,
each breath a question
that has no answer.
Perhaps one day,
you’ll cross the distance between us,
a bridge we built from words
but never dared to walk.
Perhaps one day,
I will find myself again
outside the shadow of your absence.
But today, I sit here,
in the silence,
and only two minutes have passed.

One day,
I will fade into the quiet corners of your memory,
not with thunder, not with fire,
but like a soft echo swallowed by time.
Not today, not tomorrow,
but someday,
you’ll see me for what I truly was—
not a person,
but a fragment,
a reflection of everything you hoped to find.

You didn’t love me.
You loved the promise of who I could be,
the dream you built from my broken edges.
You loved the colors you painted over my cracks,
not the emptiness beneath.
The only light I carried
was the glow of your own love,
shining through me,
casting shadows I could never escape.

And when you see the truth,
you’ll wonder:
Was it love that kept you here,
or the quiet desperation to fix what was already lost?
Was it my touch you needed,
or the hope that I might become something whole,
something I never was,
something I never could be?

Maybe you’ll feel anger.
Not at me,
but at the hours, the years,
spent holding onto something that slipped
through your fingers like water.
You thought I could complete you,
but I was only ruins—
and you,
you were building cathedrals from rubble.

You’ll grieve.
Not for me,
but for the pieces of yourself you left behind.
You’ll mourn the ghost of us,
the fragile illusion that tethered you to me.
And one day,
my name will fall from your lips like dust—
soft, forgotten,
a memory too faint to hold.
You’ll laugh at what once was,
and it will no longer sting.

You’ll heal.
You’ll find roots in the soil where I left ashes.
You’ll bloom in ways
I could never nourish.
And I?
I will sit with the weight of who I am—
not the villain,
but a shadow,
a trembling reflection of my own failures.

I hurt you—
not because I wanted to,
but because I didn’t know how to hold
what was pure.
My hands were too full of fractures,
too bloodied from battles I never won.
I broke you
because I was already breaking,
and your love pressed too close to the cracks.

One day,
you’ll forget me.
Because I was never the light—
only the flicker of a flame
that burned too quickly to keep you warm.
I was never the masterpiece—
just the frame,
just the shadow,
just the dream you poured yourself into,
hoping it would stay.

And when you say my name,
it will taste like water—
something once vital,
now unnoticed.
I will fade like the echo of a wave,
soft, distant,
leaving no trace upon your shore.

The train pulls away, its doors sealed shut,
and in the faint reflection of the window,
I see possibilities waving goodbye—
ghosts of “what ifs”
drifting like shadows in the distance.
Their hands are cold and relentless,
pressing against my chest,
pulling me back
to a place that no longer exists.

You stepped off,
carrying your decision like luggage,
while I stayed behind,
anchored to this blue-patterned seat.
In my lap, a notebook lies open—
its pages waiting for a story
I’m not ready to write.
The chapters of us are locked away,
their edges sharp,
their weight unbearable.

The train pulls me forward,
but my heart is an anchor
still buried in the platform where you let go.
I write of love, of loss,
of the quiet collapse of hope—
how it shatters without sound,
leaving only the fragments behind.

Outside the window,
fields stretch endlessly,
trees blur into fleeting streaks of green and gold.
But the reflection in the glass
does not let me escape.
The “what ifs” are still there,
etched into the surface,
etched into me,
whispering in loops I cannot silence.

The next station is far away,
and I am far from ready to leave.
The music in my ears blares louder,
each note a desperate attempt
to drown the quiet.
But the quiet creeps in,
turning every lyric
into a line of grief.

In the reflection,
you are gone.
But the shadow of you lingers—
a phantom in the corners of my mind,
dragging me back to what never was.

And still, the train does not stop.
It carries me forward,
pulling my body through the motion of leaving
while my heart stays behind,
lost in the endless cycle
of holding on to what I’ve already lost.

I know what awaits me
when you leave.
The silence won’t rush in—
it will seep, slow and patient,
curling into the corners,
pooling like shadowed water,
filling every crack until I drown in its weight.

I know the sun will rise,
but its light will cut like glass,
sharp and empty.
It will pour through the windows,
but it won’t touch me.
Without you, even the brightest day
will feel dim,
its warmth a hollow imitation
of what it once was.

I’ll move,
because I must.
One step, then another,
a quiet rhythm of survival.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
But every step will feel like walking through water,
every breath heavy with the weight
of all that is missing.

Tears will stay close,
not loud or demanding,
but constant,
like rain against a window—
soft, relentless,
reminding me of the cracks
I cannot repair.
I know the sound of breaking too well,
the quiet splitting of a heart
losing its fight against the weight of memory.

The nights will be longer than the days.
Sleep will slip away,
twisting out of my grasp like smoke.
The darkness will not comfort me;
it will tighten around my ribs,
chains of thought pulling me deeper,
until I am no longer sure
what is real
and what is memory.

They’ll tell me what to do.
Take a walk.
Pick up a hobby.
Distract yourself.
But every step will echo with what I’ve lost,
and every distraction
will feel like a futile attempt
to fill a void too deep for anything to reach.

I won’t write to you.
I won’t call.
I’ll try not to think of you.
But how do I grieve someone
who was never truly mine,
yet feels like the only thing
I’ve ever lost?

“Time heals all wounds,”
I’ve whispered this to others,
as if believing it myself
might make it true.
But I know better now.
Time doesn’t heal—it stretches, it loops, it folds.
It teaches you to carry the weight,
not to lessen it.
The burden remains,
constant as the ticking
of a clock in an empty room.

I know the ways to quiet the ache.
The small doses of forgetting,
the numbing blur of a world
too distant to hurt.
I know how to make the pain
feel less real,
but I also know
it waits for me in the quiet,
unchanged,
unmoved.

I know what awaits me
when you go.
I’ll breathe.
I’ll eat.
I’ll sleep.
The days will pass,
because they must.
But what if time
is not the cure they promised?

I don’t want to return—
back to the darkness,
back to the place
where everything broke.
But I feel it pulling at me already,
a quiet, unrelenting gravity.

And yet, I know.
The loss will settle into me,
a quiet shadow that never leaves,
a scar etched too deep to fade.
Because loss has always been my quiet teacher,
its lessons carved deep,
its weight the only thing I know how to carry.

Or as my father used to call me:
The failure, the fool,
the thorn in his side,
the mistake he couldn’t undo.
I was the reflection of everything
that fell apart in his life,
the shadow of his regrets,
the burden he carried without words
and without love.

His names for me linger still.
They don’t just follow me—
they settle into my skin,
carving themselves into every breath.
They tell me who I wasn’t,
who I could never be.
I was raised to surrender,
to shrink,
to vanish into the silence.

I spent a year in that silence,
locked away in a dark room,
wrapped in a blanket that felt
both like a shield and a cage.
I cried softly,
as if even my tears were shameful,
as if breaking under the weight of his words
was just one more failure.
I swallowed my cries,
letting them seep into the walls,
until even the darkness grew heavy
with my silence.

But one day,
I stood before the mirror,
and the silence began to crack.
Piece by piece,
it peeled away,
until I saw someone staring back—
not the shadow he made me believe I was,
but someone real.

I felt like Rapunzel,
climbing out of a tower built from my pain.
The same tears that drowned me
became the waters that lifted me higher.
Each step was a choice,
each rung a rebellion against his voice,
against the image of who he told me I’d be.

Now, I stand here,
holding dreams I thought I’d buried long ago.
Dreams he could never touch.
And for the first time, I say:
Maybe, somewhere, he’d see me now—
not as a thorn,
but as the flower that grew
from the seeds of his neglect.

Maybe he’d see me—
caring for two horses,
teaching children,
studying minds,
speaking poetry
from a heart that refuses
to stay silent anymore.

But even if he doesn’t,
even if his eyes remain blind,
I know now:
I am not the thorn,
not the mistake.
I am the woman who climbed,
who rose from his shadow,
who carried the weight of his words
and turned them into strength.

I am Steffie.
The child who wasn’t wanted,
but the woman who now stands tall—
not because of him,
but in spite of everything he made me believe.

Somehow,
without warning,
our paths crossed again.
And somehow, without mercy,
it hurt—
not the sharp sting of a fresh wound,
but the slow ache of a scar
that remembers every time it bled.

It hurt to meet your gaze,
to see the shadow of who we were
lingering there.
My past hung heavy on your shoulders,
and the future we dreamed of
lay scattered in the spaces
between your eyes and mine.
It hurt to hear the silence between us,
so loud with the weight
of all the words we never spoke.

It hurt to see your smile—
that familiar curve of your lips,
a fragment of something I once called mine.
It was the same smile we shared
when the world felt like it belonged to us,
when we thought love
could bend time to our will.

It hurt to walk through the places we once loved,
places that still carry the echoes of us.
Every step felt like walking through shadows,
where promises were whispered
and never kept.
The walls still remember,
even if we’ve forgotten,
the weight of a love
too fierce to last.

It hurt.

For so long, it didn’t.
I had learned to survive you,
to quiet the echoes of your voice
and forget the way your touch
once anchored me.
I thought I was fine.
I could hear your name
without trembling,
see your face without breaking.

But today,
in the cold wind and gray sky,
the girl I used to be woke up.
The one who loved you
more than she loved herself,
who gave you every piece of her,
wept quietly inside me.
She reminded me of the days
when time folded into itself,
when moments felt eternal
and all I wanted was to freeze them,
to hold them still.

That love—
wild and consuming,
always too much,
never enough—
beat through me again,
a second heart,
pounding against the walls I built.

It hurt.
To see you.
To hold you.
To feel your arms,
once my safe harbor,
now pulling me deeper
into the hollow they left behind.

I tell myself I don’t want to see you again.
Not if it means reliving this,
not if it means drowning
in the memory of what we couldn’t save.
I tell myself I don’t want to see you again.

But still—
please, just one more time.
And if you hold me,
don’t hold me lightly,
don’t hold me politely.
Hold me like the weight of us
is too much to carry alone.
Hold me like the last time
we believed in forever.

And let me be the girl who believed it too,
even as the clock whispered
that forever was never ours to keep.