there are days like today
when the void in my head doesn’t consume me,
when the darkness where i am doesn’t suffocate me.

it’s just there,
hovering like a quiet shadow,
pressing its weight against my back.

and there i was,
feeling its draining comfort
as though it knew i’d fought enough battles
for one day, as though it had come to keep me company.

and there i was,
letting its presence envelope me
until it was gone—
until all that was left
was my drained, bled-out body
and my mind split open,
leaking out its deafening silence.

and there i was,
sighing out all the heaviness in my chest
as though it were the last,
the only thing left to do
before everything finally ended.

i have sifted the wound in my chest for dreams gone soft with rot, spending my days stripping away the layers, as if disappointment were a skin with no depth.

how far must i carve this hollow before the marrow flickers through, before i can lift my bones like relics—fragile, foolish, still shadowed by the amaryllis that once stood, its memory lingers, refusing to die?

one would never understand the things i endured
just to become bruised into softness.
like a graveyard beaten down
by the endless steps of mourners—

each footprint a weight of wanting,
each step a trial of trying.

how strange, that what i desired most became the very thing that left me hollow. teeth pressing on these lips, crimson whispers itself away, staining the dark. my chest caves, my hands remember violence, fingernails carve crescents into my palms—

all this, just so i could tame these tendencies,
until my hands forget their fists
and tremble into quiet.