I left my phone in the fridge again.
Texted my dead friend by mistake.
The dream said turn left at the red door
but every door was mauve and melting.
I wore the wrong shoes
to the right breakdown.
God, I’m tired of being
the lesson in someone else’s flashback.
Of saying 'I’m fine'
like it’s a good thing.
Sometimes I bite a fingernail off
and flick it to the ground,
just to prove I was here,
just to pretend my DNA
is not a walking lie.
Sometimes I talk
to the dogs with TikTok accounts
like they’re holding something back.
Sometimes I rehearse my disappearances
in liminal spaces:
parking garages,
abandoned malls,
group chats I left on read.
Now I RSVP to nothing
and they still say
“you’ll be missed.”
I keep meaning to heal,
but the plot keeps thickening—
And my name—
God, my name—
it echoes like a spoiler
in a house that isn’t mine anymore.
A trivia fact
no one got right.
My memories keep getting
auto-corrected to get over it.
I don’t.
I alphabetize the wreckage.
I romanticize the ruin.
The rot is getting readable.
Anyway,
I’m late again.
Time got weird in the hallway.
I swear the mirror
was trying to warn me—
but I was too busy
checking if my under-eye bags
made me look exquisitely exhausted,
or just ordinary and old.
I wanted to scream
but the hallway
was practicing silence.
I wanted to run,
but the rug said stay
and the mirror said
be still
and beautiful and
unavailable.
The mirror said:
this is what longing looks like
when it runs out of places to go.
So I stood there—
a half-wreck, half-reflection—
trying to decide
if disappearing quietly
still counts as survival.
Somewhere,
my phone is defrosting.
Somewhere,
the red door is waiting.
Somewhere,
my dead friend
is laughing
his ghost-laugh,
mouthing: same.
