There are words I never learned how to say out loud.
They lived quietly inside me,
tucked between birthdays and breaking points,
growing heavier with each year I survived.
This is for the girl I used to be,
the one I still carry in the quietest part of me.
I don’t write this for comfort, or for answers.
Only to let her know—
someone saw her.

You will come to know how cruel life can be.
Even the way you love will be misunderstood.
But somehow, you’ll still be here
with trembling hands
trying to tie back what once came undone.

You had dreams once.
You weren’t allowed to run.
And without realizing it,
you became her—
the version you thought would save you.
The one you once whispered to in the dark.
There’s no need to grieve that.

Your heart will ache
in ways you’ve only seen on screen,
but this time it will be yours.
It might feel like something endless and hollow,
like a black hole no light can escape.
You won’t know how to fill it.
You’ll try everything.
You’ll run out of ways to love yourself.
And when all of it fades,
all you’ll have left is me.
There is no need for sides anymore.
What would that even mean, now?

Look into the mirror.
Is that shame? Is that sorrow? Is it joy in disguise?
Whatever it is, it belongs to you.
You, and the silent gods you once prayed to.
Maybe they’re still listening.
Maybe they remember the wishes you buried in each birthday candle
and the quiet pleas you whispered during prayers
in front of grown-ups who never seemed to run out of time.

I hope those gods are still up there,
watching you like you asked them to.

Draw your line, steady and slow.
You won’t always be underneath it.
You were made to rise above the noise,
to watch this world fall apart in flames,
not by your hands,
but by theirs.

So let your feet move closer.
Let your gaze meet what once made you flinch.
You'll see they flicker, shift,
and vanish like shadows
never meant to stay.

This weight stays with me. It doesn’t sit on my shoulders—it settles deeper, somewhere no one sees. I’m not asking to die. I just want to disappear. Quietly. Slip out of reach, far from the constant buzz of people trying to fix what they’ve never really heard. They love me—I don’t doubt that. But their love doesn’t touch the part of me that hurts the most. It’s the part under the surface, where everything feels muted and sharp at once. I laugh when I need to. I answer messages. I show up. But the truth is, I barely hold together some days. I walk through noise like I’m made of smoke. The pressure doesn’t ease. It’s just there. Always. I keep going—not because I believe in anything—but because movement feels easier than explaining what stillness would mean.

This thing comes and goes as it pleases. I have no say in when or how hard it hits. It wraps itself around my chest and waits, and I carry it like a second spine. I’ve thought about leaving—not dramatically, not loudly—but fading, like dust. I think about the faces that would cry, and how they’d search for answers I don’t even have. That’s the cruelest part: I don’t know what’s wrong. I only know it hurts. If my light dims entirely, I won’t go chasing darkness. I’ll just lie still. Let the body slow. Let the thoughts stop tapping. Let time forget me. Maybe no one’s to blame. Maybe I just never found the right shape to live in. I feel safer in the world I made in my head. It’s soft. Familiar. I wish it were real. In that place, I fly. I fall. I run. I fly again. The cycle never ends, but at least it’s mine.

I have two names. One for strangers, one for those who got close. But if you call me by the name from home—the one soft with history, the one that still holds warmth—I’ll know it’s me you see. The real me. And in that moment, maybe I won’t drift. Maybe I’ll stay. So say my name. Call it like it matters. It might be the only thread I have left.

You can love me as long as you want to. For as long as I’m here. Maybe even longer, if someone else ever takes your place. But I need you to know: there’s a chance I won’t make it. Not out of choice, but exhaustion. I’m in pain. Real pain. And I don’t know how long I can stand upright with it. But if you stay—just for a little while longer—while there’s still breath in me, I’ll be grateful. Not healed, but grateful. Maybe the idea of death is the only thing that’s ever felt like relief. Like something I can finally rest inside. If you’re willing to wait with me for ten more years, maybe I’ll surprise both of us. And if you can’t, I’ll understand. That just tells me love was never a place I was meant to stay in. Even though I’ve felt it—maybe with someone before, maybe with you—my love, my almost. Please don’t be sad. Not for this. Not for me.

Well, I tried again. This time, it doesn’t feel like starting from nothing, but the weight is still the same. I spent a week preparing myself, convincing my heart to be ready, only to sit there five minutes before the service, frustrated and restless.  

I argue with my mother more than I’d like to admit. Maybe because she’s from a different time, or maybe because I always feel the need to protect myself—to refuse blame, to stand my ground. I don’t think that’s wrong. But if it’s a sin, then I’ll apologize again and again. Guilt has a way of creeping in, and if I feel guilty, maybe that’s proof enough that I was wrong—at least a little.  

I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I ask Blessed Mary, ever-******, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.  

The words caught in my throat today. Maybe I do have ambitions, dreams, things I want to achieve. But more than anything, I just want to be better—for myself, for the people around me. That’s all it really comes down to. A hope for something lighter, something kinder. A future that doesn’t feel so heavy.

If time could bleed itself open,  
perhaps I would carve the same wound again.  
You were always closing doors,  
or worse—stacking bricks into a fortress so high  
even the sun could not crawl in.  

I could whisper a thousand apologies,  
kneel, break myself into shards,  
but you—  
you would remain the same,  
a monolith of ego, cold, untouched.  
I could have handed you the whole sky,  
peeled the stars from their silk,  
but what would it matter?  

Everything was always destined for ruin.  
No road we took would have changed the ending—  
you leaving, him leaving,  
the gods watching us from their cruel balconies,  
smirking at the wreckage.  
A curse, you said.  
Do you grieve that night still?  

I tried not to raise my voice,  
but even my silence rattled the walls.  
And you—  
you only hummed back,  
a song without a name.  
We never spoke the same language,  
we were never speaking to each other at all.  

Then why did we trade hearts,  
if only to smash them on the floor?  

You knew this would hurt—  
but how much longer?  
And suddenly, I wanted to tell you:  
I am sorry.  
That night, I was rubble, too.  

You will never know how it felt  
to split my love between you both,  
to stand in the middle of a burning field,  
watching the flames choose their own direction.  

You may think me cruel,  
a villain to your tragedy,  
but you twist the knife, too—  
as if your own hands are clean.  
If you need to make me the monster,  
then do it.  
I understand.  

I always tried to understand.  
But did you?  
Did you ever try?  
It doesn’t matter.  
The bloom has rotted.  
This story has already folded itself closed.  

You are gone,  
and so is he.  

Worse than death,  
you still breathe somewhere,  
watching, haunting.  
And I—  
I have nothing left to say.  

Sometimes,  
you tell me you miss me.  
And then what?  
You are still the same ghost,  
still wearing the same skin.  
Do I need to wonder anymore?  

Sometimes,  
I hate you.  
But hate dissolves when longing enters,  
so I swallow it down.  

Because everything is different now.  
Because I have already stepped forward.  
Because I no longer live where you left me.  

And neither do you.  

I regret nothing.  
Hate me if you must.  
Despise me if you will.  
And I—  
I will do the same.  

But there is a life behind this wreckage.  
Should we feel guilty?  
Or is it just me?  
I know you never could.  

You still want to live inside some weeping romance,  
some film where sorrow is beautiful.  
But my life is made of numbers now.  
I count time, I count money.  
Love is a ghost  
I no longer chase.  

Let it die where I once loved you.  
Let it rise again—  
or not.  
Let it wander its own path,  
let it stumble into someone else’s arms.  

Perhaps I will die old and alone,  
with no friends, no bloodline,  
just silence in the room where I last exhaled.  

Or perhaps I will die young.  

Look at me—  
the only thing I think of,  
besides survival,  
is the exit door.  

How different my distractions are now.  

You swallowed every last bite of love,  
chewed it to the bone,  
let it rot in your stomach.  
And I—  
I rot with it,  
my body breaking beneath its weight.  

I need time to heal.  
Call it karma—  
for all the ways I shattered you.  
Perhaps I was your nightmare.  

I look in the mirror,  
and I think you might be right.  

When does this end?  
Do I have to wait for one of us to stop breathing?  
Must it be death that writes the final chapter?  

No.  
No more death sewn with guilt.  

I have parents,  
and I love them.  
Their death should be the one to break me.  
And yet, what is death?  
A dim cocoon where I hang in silence,  
forever suspended, dumb with nothingness?  

I am tired.  
So terribly tired.  

Oh God,  
I haven’t even read the Bible today.  
I haven’t even prayed.  

This ache is greater than the God inside me.  

Look at me—  
how foolish I sound.  

You don’t believe in God, do you?  
And yet, you curse the gods.  
As if they are the reason we could never be.  

And you know what?  
I agree with them.  

Let’s end this.  
Go.

How do I begin? You drift in, unwelcome, unbidden. A specter wearing the face I once knew, mouthing apologies like they mean something. Perhaps I hate you; perhaps I don’t. The distinction hardly matters. Time was a thread I wound around you, and you let me pull until my hands bled. You stood there, watching, silent as an open grave. You knew. You knew. And still, you did nothing.  

You arrived like warmth at my doorstep, a flicker of sun on frostbitten skin. You let me thaw. You let me believe. And then you vanished again, and I was left with nothing but the phantom ache of where you had been.  

But you were not cruel. Not in the way knives are cruel, not in the way storms break houses down to their ribs. You were absent; you neglected; you were a hollow where something should have been. And perhaps that is the worst cruelty of all.  

I should forget you. I should focus on the ones who stayed, the hands that still reach for mine. But why is it that only your absence gnaws at me like something starving? Why is it only your silence that echoes?  

What am I to do with a ghost? What am I to do with the apology that will never come? I do not want it anymore. It would mean nothing; it would change nothing. I am trapped in the shape of a person I no longer recognize, stitched together with grief and resentment. I hate this, I hate you, I hate everything, and still, I go on breathing.  

You will never understand. You never did. You stood outside my suffering, peering in like a child at a locked door. And now it repeats. The dream, the ache, the slow unraveling. The absence, vast and unrelenting, stretched out its arms to cradle me.  

I am still not whole. I may never be. Perhaps this is what remains of me. A shell, a shadow, a quiet thing carrying its dead.  

I do not ask for much. Only to be free. Only to forget. Only to wake up one day and find myself unburdened.  

Without you.  

You are dead. And I am still here.

Years have passed, my love, yet your voice still follows me like a lost piece in time. How I've craved for your laughter, the soothing romance of your words, and the way 'I miss you' once came from you—that made my heart falter and nearly die.

Must love need such sacrifice before its reality blooms and becomes genuinely ours to hold? I find none that can match it, despite my mother, with her kind heart, sending out men of money she likes, expecting to see me loved solely by fortune. In her eyes, I am beautiful and graceful, knowledgeable and deserving of the best heart. Is the heart yours? I don't know. All I know is that I revere you, despite the fact that my reason and aching are at odds—an Armageddon within me.

So here's a taste of it, my love. A love I once held with naïve wonder, thrilled by something I barely understood. But now I'm all too familiar with its gravitational pull and resistance. You may grow to loathe me for this. Still, a part of me wants to see you; you know my favourite food and where we met. However, I have no desire to revisit those memories; let them remain where they belong, and I will go there with whomever I choose. You, my darling, are no longer sacred in that sense.

Sometimes I think, if love is so strange, let me live forever—such beauty is worth more than a fleeting existence. I do not want death or an end, but if it is necessary, we must have one. However, the universe feels like a half-dreamed story, I can't understand. Would that it were everything but a delusion! But if I go out to the streets and cuss at the loud passers-by, they will yell back, won't they? If I upset my boss, she'd kick me out, wouldn't she? Then all of this must be true. But that's strange—very strange—and I don't understand it. And you still love me, don't you?

At times, I still wonder what you truly want from me. You seem to have no desire other than to completely possess me and hold me tight. Isn't it only a simple need to feel me near again, to know that what we dreamed and felt is as real as your own and mine? Yes, what we've loved in thought and heart aligns like stars—but you have no idea how much I've changed. My love stays unaffected.

If only you knew that you are not equally deserving in my eyes as you think. You have no idea exactly which path I will choose or what the future holds. Yet, how beautiful it is to see 'I love you' in my eyes every day—a shelter, a wish realized. That is exactly what my heart desires. However, we are separated, and I am free to go as I like. I make no guarantees, simply that I still hold you in my heart. But my life, dear love, is mine alone—not for you!

I don't know the weight of your troubles, your love, or the loneliness that keeps you where you are. Perhaps your pain outweighs mine, leading me to question whether I should wish you gone. You've rusted like iron, and I'm the stone that has been softened by time and is meant to sparkle like diamonds. May my foolishness make things even more difficult? For the time being, wisdom is more than enough. And, despite my selfishness, I can't take the thought of losing you. You must stay by my side until I can find joy without you. Perhaps this is the price you must pay, but in the end, it will be worth the difficulty I face.

What if we were imprisoned by the world itself, destined to love one another forever, and suffered an endless misery? Is it possible that we were meant to cross paths and fall in love again in some previous life? I fail to recognize how, but I know you; therefore, it can't be any other way. You have a familiarity, a knowing, as if your soul and mine had already danced in silence that only we know.

My darling, how lovely it would be to leave this world in your loving hands. But is it possible that even if I were to marry someone else in the future, the sight of your face would be the only thing that would bring me peace? The cruelest of fates, wouldn't it? Because it is you that I have loved, both joyfully and sorrowfully. We are intertwined in both tenderness and pain, like a rose and its thorn. Oh God, the pain of loving you sends through the heavens—how many times have I spoken your name? My friends are aware of you. My mom is aware of you. Who gives us this love, though? For what purpose does God permit it? How much of this can I take?

Didn't you initially blame the heavens and all of their gods? Allow them to work now in their unusual, fateful way. And if that is the case, then allow me to receive the karma I have sown, just as you must in due time.

My soul's cry is known by your listening heart, Lord, if you do indeed hear. I hand in to your will, whatever it may be, because you are the one who has seen me through this storm. You know my heart, and by knowing me, you also know him, even though my prayers haven't reached him. Give us your blessing so that we can be happy no matter what happens or, at the very least, feel at ease knowing that we are protected by one another's love. I beg you alone: Lord, lighten his burdens. If that lightening means a life apart from me, then so be it. I would have him freed, given he finds peace.

I realize that you might only want to love me at this moment, but even so, my heart still loves you, even though I worry that my efforts may decrease or stop completely. There is a desire inside of me for something greater than what we have been. Even though you are very kind, it is not enough to keep me because you need to accept everything about me and my family in order to possess me. This will be a huge burden for you, my love. However, I assure you that I will see you again, though in a different lifetime, at a moment so special. Because even after I'm gone, you will always be a part of my soul. I want you to be the last person to hold me when death calls for me—by my side as I turn to dust. My dear, what a burden it must be for you. I long to rise again because it is already too heavy for me to handle.

Maybe I won't order the ramen, and if I do, it would be better to enjoy it by myself. After all, our meeting spot is just a mall that I love, where I will stroll around and spend in treats to prove to the world that I am capable of standing tall and on my own. My lipstick, blush, bronzer, and contour, my shoes, clothes, and bag all reflect a world I've created, with each item being more costly than the one before it. Nevertheless, I question if you are worthy of walking with me. Wouldn't a wealthy, attractive man be more appropriate for a woman like me? I know you used to say you were busy, but what have you turned into?

Love, you have taken up so much of my time, making me rebuild, only to come back when everything has changed. My once-steady heart is now an overturned table. Now, where have you gone? Not quite as far as I was in 2019? Maybe 2020? Have you in any way made your parents proud of you? And I would say that mine have supported me through every storm and seen me slap away every hard reality. Silence has never been an ally in our battles. They are too familiar with you. My dear, your hopes are too high. Even though I didn't understand her at the time, my mother saw you as something I couldn't hold from the beginning. I can now understand why, through the lens of her sorrow—her own first love lost to the passage of time. I'm not going to wait to hear about your passing. But know that you are going to understand when it's time for me. As you always have, you will regret it in the moment—you're always too late.

You will never be mine, my love; my soul cries. This writing, this troubled text, was the result of a ****** conflict between emotion and logic that was impossible to stop. You are a myth that continues in the back of my mind and is sewn into every part of my days. Perhaps we will cross paths in another life. Let your actions speak louder than words if you genuinely love someone. Given that I can't believe this, even as your voice echoes in my ear. I have put you in the past, out of my reach, save for a moment of desire. I might give up if you want me in the middle of the night, but know that it will be without love. All that's left is an unsatisfied hunger for you. Maybe it's the fire we used to share, the touch, or the body I miss. However, it's not that simple—no, my desire extends farther back, to a moment when I believed I had truly loved you. But now all I can feel is the pain of the flesh I want.

My heart would shake with fear if death were fighting for you right now, because what if the afterlife were real and you could see me from some distant, invisible realm? However, I would prefer that you be sent to a place of eternal pain rather than peace because of the years of suffering you have caused me. And yet—how you have turned into such a complete and miserable tragedy that even my anger has been controlled by your own miserable condition.

Should you ask as to whether we will ever fall in love again, I give up. The weight of it all aches too much in my soul for me to know how to respond. I hope you get it. Even though I am only a passing thought to you, I am standing here with a grudging sense of happiness in my chest—perhaps blessed that you want to keep me and wish for me forever. How are we supposed to live? I'll ask again: do you get me? I seek happiness—just you and me, in bliss—rather than sadness in our times together. You still only touch me in bed and give me momentary pleasure; there is no heart-to-heart exchange. You have no place in my future. I hope, by the gods, you understand this.

I've prayed for eternity to drive away this desire and to abandon my love for you, just as one might exorcise a curse. I wish I could have such a miracle, but should I call upon someone to erase you from my thoughts? Oh, if such cruelty could ever be reversed, how painful it would be for you.

I feel you—these words are like a weight I can't bear, intended for me but hollow, fading before they hit.
You murdered me, didn't you? I'm somewhere untainted, in a spot I can't go to yet keep ending up in, like if I was never supposed to belong but can't seem to get out.

We were never meant to be—that's the part I finally understand, despite my instincts.
I thought I could get away from it, forget about it, but your silence continues to ring—a persistent echo that I can't escape.
You don't have to say it; I can hear it anyhow.
The empty areas where we used to be are a piece of you that I will never possess.
A love that was never truly mine.

And, sure, I ruined it.
Of course, I did.
I trusted in this and in you—this ruin.
I believed the shattering captivated me, but it was something else I convinced myself.

You say you want peace, but I don't believe you know what it means.
Is it letting go? Is it more than that?
Is it setting me free or setting yourself free from me?
We'll continue to go in different directions, saying we've forgotten about the hurt.
Learning to cope with what is absent.

They'd tell me to go away, to give up—but if you love me, say it, and say it louder, until all that remained was quiet, the place where we once were.
I'll keep traveling, but I will never stop seeing you.
I'll never stop feeling you; this unhealed pain leaves no scars.
It just remains open, no matter how much time we spend.

So this is the last line, the last thread winding down, and the last thing I'll never speak aloud.
We let go and go on, but I'll always remember you, even when it's not right.

And maybe, in time, we'll both fade into something different.
Not together, not as we imagined, but separate, and that will suffice.
Perhaps that's the closest we'll ever come to peace.