my phone was on silent,
and i missed his call.
“i called you by accident,”
he said, when i rang back,
“i have nothing to say.”

nineteen minutes later,
his sweet sound of nothing
was still on the line,
untangling his day.

i hate being a burden.

my friend brings
food to my home.
he worries about me,
waits for me to swallow
like proof i’m still here,
even though i'm so lost,
so alone.

i can feel myself
splitting at the seams,
turning into
something i’m not.
something i fear.

i hate being a burden.

but i don’t know
how to be anything else.

he said
i wasn’t feminine.
he said it twice,
hoping the echo
would re‑write
my code
of not being lady‑like.

he came to the conclusion
we should stop.
i talked like a mate.
and didn’t fit
his narrow idea
of a woman.

and i told him,
i won’t fold myself
to fit his frame.
no one
gets to offer lessons

on
how
we
should
be
shaped.

my brother the other day,
as if he didn't know,
asked me my age.

i was puzzled,
but fair –
he’d lead me somewhere.

“i’m twenty-three.”

his reply like a slap:
“aren’t you ashamed?”

for a second,
i wondered
if he knew something
i didn’t.
guilt bloomed in my veins.

then he repeated,
“twenty-three.
and you still haven’t
finished your book.”

ten years on,
he’ll find a parcel
on his doorstep.
with a note, tucked
inside the page:

“i'm sorry
it took so long.
some stories need
a decade in the dark
before they finally
find their shape.”

i didn’t want to,
but i wrote anyway.
cracked open
like a shell,
flooding with memory.

some words
arrive as if they’ve waited
their whole lives
to be read.

i had to touch you.
no reason —
just the pull of knowing
twenty-six days
is all we have left.

i plan
to press my memory
into your skin
every day,
so you can carry
the echo of us
through the ache
of my touch,
even after you vanish
and leave me behind
with no one
to guard my heart.

i went back at twenty-three,
to the school that survived me.
the rebel, the headache,
the girl who wouldn’t listen —
and thought of this building
as being trapped in a cage.

it felt like coming home.
my teacher grinning wide,
filling me with warmth,
hugging me from the side
during the memorial,
as if the teenagers on stage
weren’t reciting poems
about the war.

he kept leaning in,
whispering jokes
of old times.
shushing didn’t work –
i was secretly glowing
in their unexpected pride.

they called me the proof.
an example, that
the troubled can bloom.
but all i could think
was how they loved me
through my worst,
and still do.