Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
I feel like i am the worst daughter,
The first time I smiled in years was after my dad went to prison…
I feel terrible, because I didn’t cry for months.
I still remember the look on his face when the police took him from me..
His beard wasn’t short but wasn’t long, and it was red with some gray..
His eyes had this look in them like he was upset I had to see him like that.
They just gave me the silent apology that his voice couldn’t.
His eyebrows were slightly raised like he didn’t know how I would react.
He seemed like he was surprised and hurt.
Surprised I didn’t react or cry,
Hurt I didn’t try to stop them from taking him.
I walked away without even looking back.
What kind of child does that?
Just walks away from the person they loved the most?
The person who was their whole world.
It made me feel so horrible, I stopped eating.
I wouldn’t eat much for months until I met my new parents,
I still felt like a terrible daughter and thought nobody would ever love me again.
All the people I met just kept proving that to me,
Everyone but them
I wrote this for my dad, who's in prison.
Xnarf Aug 28
As the thick mist inside subsides, he looks around
Finally regained a form of sense
Still bound
Hanging on with a crumbled defence

Tilting his head towards the heavens, he proclaims his disdain.
Wretched beings, break your silence
Acknowledge this pain
Stripped of all humanity, he stands in defiance

Carefully carrying this grief and sorrow
The end is where he wishes to begin
Deleted any perspective for tomorrow
Inviting his demons back to reside within

A flood of dark and putrid aura seizes his mind
Now the beings once again feast
As they mould and sculpt to get this prey refined
His petrified heart shall never again be released

Among those who stand on the edge, he now takes root
The crushing presence of the nether, home sweet home
The screams and whispers and everything they constitute
Home is where he’ll always roam
Everly Rush Aug 24
The dormitory never sleeps.
Lights hum like insects,
shadows twitch across the floor,
and every night I remember,
this is not where I am visiting.
This is where I live.
This is where I am kept.

The other girls go home.
They vanish into weekends,
into kitchens filled with noises
and smell
and warmth.
They complain about parents,
about rules,
about being seen too much.

I would give anything
to be seen too much.
Instead, I return to my bed,
my small metal drawer of belongings,
my ceiling with its web of cracks.
It stares down at me every night,
silent,
unchanging,
a reminder that nothing waits
beyond these walls.

My parents are smoke now.
They pass through my thoughts like strangers.
Their voices are static,
distant,
sometimes I wonder
if they’ve already forgotten me.
Maybe I was too easy to let go.
Maybe I was never worth holding onto.

I don’t plan for the future.
The future is a locked door.  
The future is another hallway
that leads back here.
I have stopped imagining anything else.

Sometimes, in the quietest hours,
a thought flickers,
a cruel kind of hope:
one day I’ll grow wings.
But even as it comes,
I know it isn’t true.
Even birds fall.
Even birds are crushed beneath tires
on roads no one bothers to cross.

So I fold myself smaller each night,
make myself a shadow
so no one will notice how much I’m missing.
I practice the art of disappearing,
learning to dissolve into silence,
to be overlooked,
to vanish without the world
ever pausing to ask why.

And if I write it down,
it isn’t for saving.
It’s proof I was here,
that once there was a girl in this building
who waited,
and waited,
and was never collected.
Found this in my drafts. I wrote this on the 21st April at like 4ish in the afternoon.
Arpitha Aug 16
So desperate for a lending ear
That I’m willing to
cut off mine
and listen to myself vent!
Michael Ryan Aug 15
I said my favorite food was
something fancy until after college.
Then I found the voice to say it was pizza.

But I never did find a way to say
Me, Myself, and I don't really agree
with life.

Instead I said.
Sure, pineapple belongs on pizza.
Find a way to say how you really feel.  If you're not saying it then you aren't really living it either. (Which is difficult - no judgement.
Ariannah Aug 14
Do you have any idea
How illegal it feels not to be able to cry in your own room?
because being heard is too high of a risk
and instead,
you have to tip toe to the bathroom
careful not to make any of the crying sounds,
Just to get in there
and unconsciously fall on the hard cold ground,
searching for the bit of light
you once saw at the end of the tunnel.


But then you realize
that maybe down there is where you belong,
maybe that's where you were supposed to get to once you felt like all you do is wrong,
and it just feels like the right moment to give up
when there's no more air entering your lungs,
Or no more hope hidden deep into your heart,
when your head can no longer rest on your shoulders,
and it has to fall on the hard wood door,
when the tears streaming down your face are too many than your messy hands and clothes could handle,
and the eyes just hurt too much to be opened by now..


But you have to get up,
You have to calm down,
You have to find a way to make yourself able to breathe normally again,
So you crawl,
And you crawl,
till you reach something that could help you get up,
Only to feel physically hurt by one's actions.


You stare in the mirror,
And question how did we even get here;
You no longer recall or remember any of the things happening outside the room,
When all you have to do is fake smile and move on.
No.
You're just staring at yourself.
And it's just you.
But you right now look more like a monster, a messy unloved piece of art that just reflects how you feel because it's true..
But it's still you.


And it only took you that moment to realize that you had lost...
But not just any game,
you lost the version of yourself you never thought would live again..
And you're empty.
You just feel defeated.
There in the bathroom looking in the mirror.
And it hurts.
It hurts not to be able to look in your eyes,
It hurts even more just when you see you cry.


But you hold on,
And with your trembling hand,
You turn on the water and try to wash your face,
as if the sadness would just come off;
like some messy make up you forgot to whipe off.
So the tears go,
But new ones just reappear,
And the sadness you thought was gone just keeps on hanging near.
And it's close.
And it hits again
with a type of hurt someone only feels when they are too scared to try again.
And it hurts.
It hurts because it's rare.
To still love and not feel like they really care.
Or maybe they do
but you're just too hurt to think
of another 50 ways of how this is not a real thing...


But you're still looking in the mirror,
and you realize you kinda have to go,
because you spent too much time hanging low..
So you whipe all your tears,
and put on a big fake smile,
then crawl back to the door,
But you stop.
you take a big deep breath,
and lift your chin up like you didn't loose yourself in there.


And you open the door.
And try to normally walk into your room
Like your heart isn't shattered into tiny pieces scattered because it just went "boom".
And you get in there,
but you're too afraid to speak
cause even the silence feels too loud when you're just trying to keep,
keep yourself sane
and tell yourself how it's just gonna be ok.


But it's impossible to make yourself think that way
When the only thing you were able to think was just how everything got destroyed in the time of a blink.
Everly Rush Aug 11
no seriously what’s the point
like they hand me this plastic bottle
full of “fix me”
and im supposed to believe
these tiny sugar dots are gonna save my life
like yay science thank you doctor man
you’ve officially cured my brain
…. except no
because i still wake up and the first thought is ugh
and i still go to bed and the last thought is ugh
and all the middle thoughts are worse

i swallow them anyway
every morning like a good little patient
smiling like yeah totally “getting better”
but it’s just
chalk and spit
and everyone keeps saying “just give it time”
like time isn’t the exact thing
that’s been killing me slowly this whole time

and it’s funny
because when i really needed them to work
when i was one inch away from not being here at all
they just sat in my stomach
doing absolutely nothing
lazy little magic beans
refusing to sprout
and i guess im still here
but not because of them
never because of them

maybe they’re just placebos
maybe everyone knows it but me
maybe they’re hoping ill stop talking about it
because my silence is easier to swallow
than the truth that
im still
not
okay
20:05pm / i don’t think meds are working
Nathan Aug 7
The café is crowded today.
The sun bleeds through the windows,
Too golden, too alive.
Laughter spills from warm mouths,
Voices tangled in gossip and joy—
Sips of “hot tea” passed like communion.

They are full.
Full of stories, of fire, of something.
And I—
I watch from the shadows,
Wearing a smile that doesn’t belong to me.

Why do I feel nothing?

Why does the world move
As if I’m not even here?

Two shots of Americano sit before me,
Untouched.
Their black depths reflect my own—
Still, bitter,
And staring back.

I wonder if they know
That I am not whole.
That half of me is elsewhere,
Wandering some unseen purgatory.

My body is here,
But my soul?
It left long ago.
Perhaps in silence.
Perhaps screaming.
I can't remember anymore.

Friends used to say,
“You look like a corpse with breath.”
And I laughed—
The way ghosts might laugh
At the echo of a joke
They no longer understand.

I daydream often,
But dreams never stay.
They float just out of reach—
Like the memory of warmth
Or the sound of someone calling your name
After they've already gone.

I was the joker once.
Now, I am the joke.

Some days,
I wonder if I died
And no one noticed.

That I simply
Kept living
Out of habit.
Everly Rush Jul 29
I fell like silence breaking,
a scream that never made it out,
the wind folding around me
like arms that never did.

Now, I wake in a room
stitched with wires and cold light,
where the air tastes of bleach
and every surface hums with life
that isn’t mine.

The machine speak in beeps
soft, exact, unfeeling.
Beep.
I’m still here.
Beep.
I failed.
Beep.
I failed.

They say the sound is good.
They say the beeping means I’m stable.
But it only reminds me
that death didn’t want me.
That earth opened its arms
and still let me go.

The noise wraps around my head
like a shroud of neon thread.
It winds through the hollow
in my chest,
settling where the fall had emptied me.

I hate its voice,
its small, insistent hope.
It has no right to be so calm
when everything inside me
is still falling.

I close my eyes,
but there’s no peace.
Just the beep,
beep,
beep,
dragging me back
from the edge I chose.

And I want to ask the silence
why it let me go.
Why it handed me back
to this world of white and wires,
to these strangers with clipped voices
and pity in their eyes.

But silence won’t speak here.
Only the machines do.

Beep.
I’m still alive.
Beep.
I’m still alive.
Beep.
God, why?
14:22pm / I just want absolute quiet and chocolate and to sleep forever.
Everly Rush Jul 27
Now I’m here.
Still breathing, somehow.
Skin full of bandages.
Bones that don’t work right.
Machines that beep
like they’re disappointed I made it back.

They say I’m lucky.
That I survived.
That it wasn’t my time.

But if it wasn’t,
why does it still feel like
I left the real me on the concrete?

Dad didn’t come.
She did,
but only to sign papers
and shake her head.
Her words still burn:
”Guess you’re not even good at this.”

I thought it would feel like a clean slate.
Like waking up would mean
something changed.
But it didn’t.
I’m still the same hollow girl,
just stitched back together,
like that’s enough.

They gave me a new journal
with blank pages
and hopeful prompts.
But I don’t want hope.
I want to know
why being alive
still hurts more than falling ever did.

I don’t know if I’ll write again.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe this is the only thing
I had left to say.

I jumped.
And I survived.
But that doesn’t mean
I’m okay.
10:47am / I have a horrible pounding headache
Next page