I still see them laughing,
their voices overlapping through the screen,
like nothing ever broke,
like nothing ever changed.

And I sit here,
in a room that used to be full of noise,
wondering when I became the ghost
that left before the punchline.

They move on so easily,
as if the silence I drowned in
was just background static,
a thing to forget, not to feel.

And I hate that it still gets to me.
That a list of names and hollow “heys”
can scrape at the ribs of someone
who once called that noise home.

Because I remember,
the jokes,
the stupid games,
the nights we mistook belonging for forever.

But forever is short when you're the one left out.
And envy tastes bitter
when you swallow it alone.

One still checks in sometimes,
a small mercy,
a reminder that I existed once
in the warmth of their world.

And still, I ache.
Not for them, maybe,
but for the version of me
that used to belong somewhere.

Now it's just me,
and the hum of a quiet call that never connects.

But maybe this loneliness
is a kind of cleansing,
a cruel way of teaching me
to find peace in my own noise.

So I watch them from afar,
not with hate,
but with a hollow kind of grace.

Because they still have each other,
and I have what's left of me.
It's not much,
but it's what remains
after the room went quiet.

I don't remember when the noise began
maybe it was always there
a low hum inside the skull,
like a wire burning out.
You can live a whole life with it.
You can smile, nod, answer questions,
and no one ever notices the hum.
But it grows. It eats through words.

People stand near. They reach,
say they're here,
say they'll listen,
say all the things people say.
Their mouths move,
but their faces blur,
hands blur,
everything slides away.
Their kindness lands but doesn't stick.
Water on cold stone.
Sound with no echo.

There are nights
when the ceiling presses down,
closer, closer,
until it's no longer ceiling but earth.
And I don't know if I'm lying down
or being buried.
Breath is an act.
Breath is labor.
Silence is louder than sound.
The room hums.
I hum back.

Hope becomes a cruel currency.
You trade pieces of yourself to hold it,
but it gives nothing back.
And slowly
so slowly you don't notice
your hands stop reaching.
Your mouth stops explaining.
You stop looking for names to call
because the names don't answer
or they answer but you can't feel them anymore.

It's easier to look alive than to prove you're not.
So you laugh in the right places.
You nod. You walk.
The hum keeps chewing.
Inside you,
rooms go dark one by one,
doors shut,
and nobody sees it happen.

The words now come like splinters.
Not sentences, fragments.
Shards.
I drag them out one by one,
like nails from a coffin.
They shake in my hands.
They cut as I write.
It's not even thought anymore.
Just a noise.
A noise I'm still trying to make
because if I stop,
I'll disappear completely.

This isn't a confession.
It isn't a prayer.
It isn't even a message for anyone to find.
It's just the last static in the line,
the last hum before the wire burns out.
And even here,
in this broken writing,
I am trying to hold on.
Trying to stay visible.
Trying to keep my voice
from fading into silence.

What's left of me is not a heart,
only a hollow that beats out of habit.

What's left of my voice is not a song,
only silence wearing the mask of speech.

What's left of my hands is not warmth,
only shadows reaching for things
that never stayed.

I am not a storm,
I am the ruin storms leave behind,
the cracked walls,
the ash where fire once lived.

So do not pity me.
There is nothing left to grieve,
only a shell that learned too late
that love carves deeper wounds
than hatred ever dares.

But should there come one soul
who stands in these ruins
and whispers, thou art enough,
then hear this,
for it is no promise but a spell.

I will love thee past the marrow,
with devotion sharp as broken glass,
with a hunger that burns like winter fire,
with a heart, though splintered,
more faithful than any whole.

And in my loving
thou shalt never walk unmarked,
for my name will be written
in every quiet corner of thy life,
as if love itself were a curse
too deep to break.

Some days arrive without their weight,
as if the hours forget what they were meant to carry.
A spark appears, almost by accident,
and the air feels easier to breathe.

It never asks for much,
a word, a laugh,
something so small it shouldn't matter,
yet somehow it does.

But nothing lingers forever.
The glow drifts quietly away,
and the silence settles back in place,
familiar as an old companion.

And I don't call it unfair.
I don't chase what's gone.
It's simply the way days return to themselves,
steady, unchanging, whole again.

The days arrive and depart,
each one quieter than the last,
like footsteps fading down a hallway
with no promise of return.

The hours spill into one another,
and every face looks the same,
blurred outlines of voices
that do not reach me.

I have tried to fill the silence,
with routine, with work, with anything
that makes the clock seem less cruel,
yet still it beats against my ribs.

Memories linger like smoke,
not enough to hold,
but too thick to ignore,
choking even in their absence.

And when all else fades into dust,
when nothing is left to want or to keep,
the absence sharpens into the only truth,
but its existence is the one I keep longing for.

I leave my smile
to those who swore it was real,
who mistook the curve of my lips
for a map to happiness.

I leave my silence
to those who filled it with their own truths,
who dictated what I felt
while never asking what I carried.

I leave my laughter, brittle as glass,
to the rooms that echoed it back
without hearing the crack beneath.

And my sorrow,
I bury it with me,
for no one believed it lived here anyway.

This is all I have to give,
not money, not treasures,
only the remnants of a heart
misnamed, misread,
and finally laid to rest.

The sorrow did not arrive with thunder,
it crept, a slow suffocation,
until the chest forgot how to rise,
until the veins pulsed only with silence.

It was not merely pain,
but a drowning,
each breath dragged through glass,
each thought heavier than stone.

Sleep gave no refuge,
dreams became ruins,
and waking was worse,
a return to a world stripped of color,
a place where even hope was ash.

This was sadness at its cruelest,
a weight too vast for flesh,
too sharp for memory,
a darkness so complete
it left the soul hollow,
aching, and numb all at once.