I walk like smoke,
thinned out,
a shadow nobody notices.

Every word I speak
feels too loud,
like a spoon scraping metal,
and I see the wince in their eyes
before they hide it.

I laugh at the wrong time,
stay too long in the doorway,
trip over my own name
God, how tiring it must be
to endure my presence.

I used to think I mattered,
that someone would miss me
if I disappeared.
Now the silence answers for them,
and it is sharp.

I am a weight they do not ask to carry,
a stain they cannot scrub,
a voice that echoes only against
the hollow walls of my own chest.

Lost.
Unwanted.
The kind of forgotten
that feels like being erased
in real time.

If I am annoying,
then let me be forgotten quicker.
If I am forgotten,
then maybe the ache will quiet.

Until then,
I shrink,
I fade,
I turn my own heart inside out
and whisper apologies
to no one listening.