I don’t know how many ways
I can say please don’t go.
My voice is threadbare,
worn thin by the echo—
of every time I’ve begged
a heart to stay.

Please.
I won’t raise my voice,
I won’t ask for forever.
Just this moment.
Just tonight.
Just your hand in mine
a little longer
before it slips
again
into silence.

Please stay—
even if the light is fading,
even if the world pulls
and your shadow stretches
farther from me
with each breath.

I’ve sung this tune before,
a chorus cracked from overuse—
the needle stuck
on don’t leave me, don’t leave me,
and still, I press repeat,
like maybe this time
it’ll end in a different verse.

Please.
Let this love
be more than a passing song.
Let it be the one
that plays
without goodbye
in every beat of us.

Please stay.
I’ve already lost so much.
Don’t be the next
ghost I whisper to
when the music
cuts out.

Please.

Today, I’ve felt
a new sort of empty—
not the kind I’ve known before,
but something softer,
quieter,
hollow in a different way.

I have the world
just minutes from my reach,
and still—
he hasn’t filled this void.

As I write,
the phone begins to melt into my hands—
left side lifting,
right side falling,
then reversing—
a quiet seesaw of glass and ache.

My dim screen flickers,
and the world fades at the edges.
Tiny black dots bloom
in my peripheral vision—
not enough to blind me,
just enough to remind me
I’m slipping.

I ate a small chocolate granola bar today—
just that.
I was hungry,
but the hunger vanished beneath tears—
tears over him
not understanding
what he’s done wrong—
again.

A million times—
maybe less,
but it feels like that now.

And maybe it’s stupid.
But I feel ignored—
again.

I tried to explain.
I always try.
But he always forgets.

I tell myself: don’t care.
But I do.
God, I do.

It wasn’t even a big deal—
but somewhere in the silence,
my self-confidence slipped away.

I deleted every photo of myself.
All of them.
Gone.
I don’t even know why—
just that this sadness
poured in like floodwater,
crashing through the walls I’d built
to keep it out.

I’ve been sleeping all day,
avoiding his name,
my family’s voices.
I keep drifting,
even as I write.

I don’t want to do anything anymore.
And I don’t know
what’s wrong with me.