his hands are cigarettes,
burning slow across the keys.
he plays like he’s trying
to empty something out of himself,
something heavy,
something he doesn’t trust
to speak aloud.

the crowd doesn’t notice.
they drink their whiskey,
laugh at their own jokes,
and hum along like they
understand the chords.

but I watch him,
the way his fingers tremble
like they’re afraid
of what comes next.
he’s in love with the piano,
or maybe he’s just stuck with it,
like a bad marriage
that refuses to end.

the music is sharp
and it hurts in all the right places,
like stepping on broken glass
but still feeling alive.
I want to tell him:
you don’t have to play for them,
they’re not listening.
play for yourself.
play to make the ghosts shut up.

but I don’t say anything.
I just watch him finish his set,
pack up his misery,
and leave the room
quieter than he found it.

I caught myself in the mirror -
not really me,
just someone wearing my face.
they moved like a bad actor,
lines all wrong,
hands heavy,
feet borrowed.

I lit a cigarette,
watched the smoke curl
into the kind of shapes
I wish I could slip into.

I woke up again today.
the way a dog might wake up
to a kick.
not because I wanted to,
but because the hours don’t wait
and neither does the rent,
and no one cares
if you spend the morning drowning
in yesterday’s whiskey
and last year’s regrets.

the sun drips through the blinds,
thin and pale,
like it knows it’s wasting its light on me.
I light a cigarette,
watch the smoke twist,
and I wonder
how something so fragile
can disappear so easily—
then realize,
I’m not that different.

there’s a woman I loved once.
she had hair like wildfire
and eyes like a question I didn’t know how to answer.
she told me I was a storm
she wanted to walk into,
but she didn’t know
the rain never ends.
she packed her things on a Tuesday.
I tried to stop her,
but my hands were too heavy with all the things
I should’ve said when it mattered.

the world keeps moving forward,
dragging me behind it
like some forgotten wreckage.
I smile at strangers,
say I’m fine when they ask,
but every mirror I pass
whispers the truth:
you’re breaking
and no one even notices the sound.

some nights, I sit in the dark,
just to feel it wrap around me
like the arms I lost.
I drink until I forget,
and I drink until I remember.
it’s a cruel, stupid game,
but it’s the only one I’ve got left.

the thing no one tells you
about being alive
is that sometimes you’re not.
sometimes you’re just walking,
talking, breathing proof
of everything that’s gone wrong.

and when they ask me what I want,
what I need,
what I’m looking for,
I don’t have the words.
because what I want
is to go back,
and what I need
is for the pain to mean something.

but what I’m looking for—
God, what I’m looking for—
is the door out of this room.

and maybe,
just maybe,
someone who notices
I was even there
to close it.

the hallway smells like spilled beer
and cheap perfume.
someone left their shoes by the door—
a pair of red heels,
like they ran out of courage
halfway to leaving.

I sit on the kitchen floor
with the fridge open,
because it’s the only light
that doesn’t feel like it’s judging me.

half a sandwich,
a bottle of ketchup,
some leftover pasta
that no one will eat.
it’s enough to survive,
but not enough to live.

my head still echoes
with the laughter of strangers,
the kind of laughter
that leaves you lonelier
than silence ever could.
everyone seemed to know the script,
their lines smooth as glass,
their smiles the currency of belonging.

but I just stood there
with a drink in my hand,
watching the ice melt
like it had somewhere better to be.

and now it’s just me
and the hum of the fridge,
and a thought I can’t shake:
that maybe,
all those people with their polished lines
and practiced laughs
feel the same way when it’s over.

maybe we’re all just trying
to get through the night
without anyone noticing
the holes in us,
the ones we spend all day
pretending aren’t there.

but then I look at the shoes by the door,
and I know the truth.

some of us
never even try to leave.

the morning crawls in
like an old lover—
too proud to apologize,
too familiar to push away.

I light the cigarette,
the only friend I trust
to show up on time.
ash falls like the years I wasted
chasing women who smelled like
wet matches,
jobs that paid me in ulcers,
and nights that disappeared
into bottles
emptier than I’ll ever admit.

but the world doesn’t ask.
it just watches,
waiting for the moment you fold
like a bar napkin
so it can laugh,
lean in close,
and say,
“what did you expect?”

I’ve loved people like that.
they took pieces of me
like souvenirs from a war
they never fought,
and left me
trying to stand
on a foundation
of broken bottles
and borrowed apologies.

and yet—
on some nights,
when the moon is just a witness
and not a judge,
I still want to live.
not for redemption,
or revenge,
but to see the way
a child laughs
like they’ve never
been lied to.

or to hear the sound
of a stranger crying
in the next apartment over
and know
I’m not the only one
that’s trying
to make sense of all this.

but then it hits me—
the hardest truth of all:
I don’t want the pain to stop.
I just want it
to mean something.

I came into this world
purple,
a bruise before I’d even been touched.
my mother,
terrified,
watched me fight for breath
that didn’t want me.
suffocating—
from the first second I was alive.

couldn’t crawl,
couldn’t walk—
my body slow to learn
how to move forward.
but eventually, I did.

kindergarten was quiet.
me, the kid who didn’t talk.
preschool, I found friends,
found a voice,
found something that felt like living.

then 5th grade came.
cigarettes.
*****.
pills.
older kids teaching me
how to burn my insides
so i wouldn’t feel my skin.

my best friend died.
two weeks later,
I drowned with someone else.
or almost.
he didn’t make it back.
I did.

then the years blurred:
drugs.
assault.
grief.
relapse.
trying to claw my way back to clean.
trying to feel like myself again,
if I even knew who that was.

sometimes,
I think back to that purple baby,
struggling for breath,
and wonder
if maybe I wasn’t supposed
to make it past that first minute.
maybe life has been one long suffocation.

or maybe
I’m still in that hospital room,
fighting for air,
waiting for someone to say:
“you can breathe now.”

the sun sets quietly,
as if it’s tired of being seen.
I wonder if I‘d do the same
if I could.