I collect tiny proofs - sea glass, a receipt with somebody else's handwriting, a cat's last breath in a photograph -
each one an accusation and a map.
I press my palm to the stove and memorize the heat - it is the closest thing to being seen.
I kiss someone in the hallway to check if flesh still answers, then wash my mouth with lemon scented dish soap.

I have to wash the dishes before I write my suicide note.
Put away the clothes on the chair. Water the plants. Feed the cats.
Find a lighter that still works.
A sweater that doesn't smell of smoke.

I need to taste summer fruit with juice running down my wrist and chin.
Walk into the river until the current holds me steady.
Touch someone's shoulder and not let go too fast.

I want to hear a stranger laugh like it matters.
Carve initials into damp wood.
Keep a secret rock in my pocket until it's smooth with worry.
Dance to the music of thunder.
Converse with the beetle on my window.

I need to read the last page of a book in the sunlight.
Collect bones, shells, cigarette butts. Proof I was here.
Take a bus to nowhere just to come home again.
Tell someone I love them and mean it, even if they forget.
Kiss someone I don’t love just to feel the weight of it.

The words taste like rain on metal.
I’ll take a photo of myself and delete it.
Count the cracks in the ceiling.
I leave the door unlocked.
I crumple up the page.
For now.

I have been told
I speak too much
to be ignored.

At home,
I replay my day,
wincing
at every door my mouth opened
that maybe should've stayed shut.

Writing is the only room
where I am not wrong
for filling the air.

Today,
a someone said
I am good with words.
She doesn't usually read
other people's captions-
but she reads mine.

One small compliment
and I am lighter.

Maybe my words are wanted,
maybe they are not noise.
Maybe I am not
too much.

A day off the map
no lighthouse hikes
no ferry tickets in my pocket
just the cabin walls
the pines breathing slow outside

I roll up green quiet
let the smoke curl through
the screen door cracks
the air tastes like lakewater
and cedar

a chapter or two, maybe more
the book heavy in my lap
but light enough to drift away from
when Ethel Cain's voice
slips into my ears clean and close
like she's laying right beside me

no rush, no reason
the world can go on spinning its errands
while I stay here
in bed,
half ******, half reading,
all the way alive
in the hush of Tobermory

I wake with the sun on my skin,
soft sheets, warm cat, the scent of coffee-
a life stitched together with quiet blessings.
Still, the ache rolls in
like fog over golden fields.

The world burns somewhere-
bombs in bedrooms,
mothers in rubble,
children clutching silence like a toy
they no longer know how to play with.

And here I am,
eyes full of water
for reasons I can't explain,
guilt gnawing like a rat
at the corners of my comfort.

How dare I cry
when my fridge hums with food,
when I have hands to hold,
and laughter that visits,
even if it leaves too soon?

I bury my sadness
under headlines,
stacking grief like sandbags
to hold back my own storm.
But sorrow leaks anyway.

Maybe this is the curse of peace-
to carry the weight
of pain you haven't earned,
to feel broken
in a life that looks whole.

I say thank you
and still feel hollow.
I pray for others
and still feel alone.
And I wonder-
is it weakness,
or just being human,
to weep in the garden
while the world is on fire?

It starts like static-
a flicker in the dark,
a shift in the air
before the collapse.

I'm washing dishes.
I'm crossing a street.
I'm laughing-
and then I'm not.

Something small tilts the world.
My chest tightens,
my skin doesn't feel like mine,
and the moment swallows me whole.

I hate how they still live in me-
their voices in the corners,
their hands on the memories
I never wanted to keep.

The anger simmers
under every surface.
For what they did,
for what they didn't,
for how they shaped me
without permission.

I trace the outlines of what could’ve been-
a word spoken,
a door opened,
a version of me
they never got to break.

But the past is a house
that locks from the inside.
I scream through the keyhole
and call it healing.

Some days I am a person.
Some days I am a symptom.
I carry both
without dropping either.

I live with tremors.
I move through fog.
I smile like nothing cracked,
and shake
when no one is looking.

And still-
somehow-
I stay.
I breathe.
I come back
to myself.

Again.

It doesn't ask.
It never knocks.
It just shows up-
mid-sentence,
mid-step,
mid-me.

My body remembers
things I don't want to.
Fluorescent lights,
locked doors,
her voice like venom,
his hands,
the smoke thick enough
to erase a home.

I'm split between moments.
One version of me
is pouring coffee.
The other is back
in a room I begged to leave,
screaming behind my eyes
while my face stays still.

And people say
"but you're safe now."
Like my nervous system
understands logic.
Like my skin
doesn't still flinch at kindness,
like safety is a thing
I've ever known for sure.

I carry too many names.
******. Liar. *****. Crazy.
He. She. It.
I carry too many versions of myself
that other people made
without asking.

And I'm so ******* angry.
At her.
At them.
At the system that locked me up
when all I needed
was to be held without harm.
At the fact that I'm still here
trying to make something soft
out of what they left jagged.

Sometimes I wish
I could go back-
whisper to the kid
who hid under blankets
trying to disappear.
Tell him: you were right.
Tell them: it wasn't your fault.
Tell me
I'd get out.

And I did.
But sometimes,
parts of me still don't know that.
They shake,
they shut down,
they show up uninvited.

And I breathe,
even when it burns.
And I stay,
even when I want to run.
And I write,
because it's the one place
I get to be the one
telling the story.