It’s not the big things—
not the promotion,
not the breakup,
not the years that pile on like
books you’ll never read.

It’s the small ones.

The way coffee tastes different
when you drink it alone.
The moment you realize the sound
of your own laugh feels foreign.

A dog barking two blocks down.
The scent of someone’s cologne in the wind,
and how it doesn’t belong to anyone you know.

Life collects itself in little drops,
small enough to ignore
until you’re drowning.

Life isn’t grand,
it’s a ***** table in a dive bar—
the one where the varnish peels and
your drink leaves rings behind.

People walk past you,
pretending not to see the mess,
the bartender wipes at it anyway,
but it never quite cleans up.

You make a toast to nothing,
to everything,
to the way the sun stains the air at 5 p.m.,
or the waitress who once gave you a smile
you thought was meant for you.

Life isn’t a stage or a script—
it’s that quiet shuffle of feet
as you step outside,
into the cold,
and realize you forgot where you parked.

Some people
never leave the office before five.
They sit under fluorescent lights,
sipping coffee,
their dreams filed away in cabinets,
marked „someday.“

Some people
marry their first loves
and never think
about the roads they didn’t take,
the lips they didn’t kiss,
the lives they didn’t live.
They call it safety.

Some people
die in bed,
a whisper for a live,
and the night swallows them whole.
Their gravestones say:
„Beloved.“
Their ghosts scream:
„Bored.“