Sickness.
A middle ground between
A life worth living
And a life sequestered
From the worth
Of living.

Hallowed be thy strength,
Calling forth a certainty
That life will remain.
Preserved, teaching
Lessons of perseverance,
Stagnation and decay.

If only strength
Was strong enough to
Keep sickness at bay.
Falter faster, with ease,
Conveying a simple,
Yet efficient mean.

Time slips, memories fade.
Strength gives in,
An internal raid
Fills the void
With a void,
Yet how surprising

When you were never loved.

I heard them—
low voices curling through the dark,
soft as breath, sharp as broken glass.
I wasn’t supposed to hear.
But I did.

My name—
slipped from their mouths like a secret too heavy,
like a blade drawn slow.
And suddenly,
the walls felt too close,
the air too thick,
the space between us, a battlefield.

I knew what this was.
I’d seen the signs.
The hush when I entered,
the careful glances,
the way the night swallowed their words whole.

I knew—
I knew.

So I lunged.
Didn’t hesitate, didn’t breathe,
just cut.
Words like wildfire,
rage like a flood,
my voice a wrecking ball crashing through their quiet.

And then—
stillness.

No fight.
No denial.
Just eyes wide, hands empty,
hearts bleeding from wounds they never saw coming.

A gift, they said.
A surprise, they said.
A moment of joy,
crushed beneath the weight of my fear.

And suddenly, I am the villain.
The shadow in the room.
The storm where there should have been sun.

I built a monster out of whispers,
let it crawl into my bones,
let it tell me the only story I wanted to hear.

And now, here I stand,
watching trust turn to dust,
watching love fade into silence,
watching them walk away—

because I never thought to ask
before I chose to burn.

The meek nestles into the dark,
where power hums like a distant storm,
where strength, sharp-edged and waiting,
does not strike, does not break.

It does not cower.
It does not beg.

Fragility leans into force,
where dominion is not destruction
but a burden, a silence, a choice.

The strong does not devour.
The strong does not yield.

Between them, an understanding—
not spoken, not sworn,
but written in breath,
in the weight of stillness,
in the knowledge that power alone
withers without something to shelter,
and meekness alone
shatters without something to bear it.

The world does not see the balance,
but they do,
and so, for now,
they remain—unchallenged,
unbroken.

The air is heavy with undone fate,
the sky, a wound that will not bleed.
Time stirs but does not break,
a serpent coiled, forever waiting to strike.

The stars lean close, breathless,
whispering of ruin too long withheld.
The earth quivers on the cusp,
but still, the fall does not come.

Let it end.
Let the sea unmake its name,
the fire carve its final hymn,
the wind unspool the last thread of dusk.

I have stood too long in the hush of collapse,
watching shadows stretch,
watching the world poised to fall—
but never falling.

Let the silence shatter,
let the weight be lifted.
I am weary of waiting.

This, a rarity.
A stolen seashell
From the treasury of chaos,
My solitude.

Fortune favors the bold.
I'll continue to hide
With my stolen treasure,
Until chaos comes to claim.