I give everything I have
and it still falls short.
Like throwing rope into the sky,
expecting it to catch a star.

The people who care
always stumble here,
as if my presence
changes the ground beneath them.

I tell myself it’s safer
to keep them outside the blast radius,
to let loneliness
be the price of sparing them.

Meanwhile, my body
keeps writing its slow warnings
in pain,
in fatigue,
in the quiet betrayals
of flesh and bone.

Yet some part of me
keeps standing,
keeps trying,
even with gravity
pulling harder every day.