I am older now
and the mirror no longer lies, it just stops explaining.
Nirvana is a distant country I will not reach.
No train. No map.
Just the quiet knowing
of a door that will not open for me this time.
So I count other things.
The words I almost said
that would have landed like stones.
The sharp edge of humor
I tuck back into my mouth
before it draws blood
from the woman I love.
The anger, god, the anger
how it rises like heat
through cracked pavement,
looking for something to scorch.
Some days I let it.
Some days I don’t.
And no one records the difference but me.
If this is not punishment
it wears the same face
wakes me the same way,
sits in my chest
I don’t remember the crime.
That might be the cruelest part.
Still, I keep a ledger
no one will ever read.
Small mercies.
Half-swallowed cruelty.
Moments where I do not
make the world worse
than it already is.
It feels like trying to empty an ocean
with a cracked cup.
But I keep dipping it in.
Because if there is another life
waiting in the dark
with my name already written in it,
I want to arrive
owing less.
And if there isn’t
then at least
this one will know
I did not go down
without resisting
the worst parts of myself.
Even if the resistance
was quiet.
Even if it barely showed.
Even if it only mattered
to me.