u/Live-Suggestion-9284

i can feel you reaching

but fading from my sight

in my mind ill be the one who stays

pulling you out darker days

but i dont think im strong enough

to help you up

how can two lost at sea

set each other free

how can i reach you

when youre just outside my view

the wind is heavy inside this valley

the waves dont care which way we carry

the current is white and its letting through

i cant save me

or you

Twelve months of survival wear thin.

I count days like scars on my skin.

Every time I heal it starts over again.

January drinks and Im back where Ive been.

Why do my nights end in quiet tears

hiding from all these shifting years?

Am I waiting for someone to see

what I won’t say out loud about me?

When did I learn to be this cruel,

to play both the judge and the fool?

Who gave me this voice in my head

that follows me wherever I tread?

Why does it feel safer to stay

in the weight I carry each day?

Is it the hurt I’ve always known

or fear of a life I’ve never grown?

Why can I see the good in you

but lose it all when I look inward too?

Why does it fade, why doesn’t it stay,

was it never really mine anyway?

Am I stuck here, afraid to move,

or just scared of what I might prove?

If I let go, if I set me free,

who would I even be?

What if I forgave

the version of me I couldn’t save?

Would I feel light or fall apart

with only an open heart?

I drift through my apartment, fingers grazing ghosts. Notebooks curled like old sighs. Sweaters folded with echoes. The kettle hums somewhere.

Photographs blurred at the edges. Smiles I remember in fragments. Lamplight spills across worn floorboards.

Trophies gather dust. Mirrors hold quiet strangers. The ceiling fan spins slowly above.

Letters lie folded, their words soft with time. Handwriting I can no longer follow.

The weight brushing at my back like shadows. Somewhere in this quiet, I hear your silence reaching back.

He wants to rip my tongue from its screaming roots.

Listening for silence to choke the room.

Craving the full release of slitting my throat.

Feeling my blood drain, my fear in his hands.

Watching my eyes flutter, blurring with gray tears.

Eager for the stench of my demise to cling onto air.

I follow every rule, hands steady, eyes straight

If something happened you would need a pure answer, anything other than just me.

A deer maybe, you wouldnt blame me for panicked hooves

or maybe I looked away to answer my phone, a reckless choice but still something you could forgive

Praying for an plain answer, something gentler than the thought of my youth

You’d stand and create easy stories, versions where I fought back or that it was fate

To never have touched the brake, just carving my self into the guardwall

maybe then you would see the pain that youve caused me

They regret later.

Where is the support and understanding for people still here?

Where is it when we are breathing?

You save your softness for caskets.

Polish it.

Lay it out in rows of flowers.

You hoard your kindness like it's finite, like the living have not earned it yet.

All this love.

Sudden and excessive.

Rotting with nowhere to go but down.

You say "we never knew" like blindness is innocent, like silence isn't a choice.

They were splitting open in front of you.

You just needed pain digestible.

You did not want the living version.

The kind that interrupts dinner, that ruins the mood, that does not say thank you, that cries in the car while you are trying to drive, that lingers in the hallway after the lights are off, that needs an answer you don't want to give, that needs you when you are already tired, that does not get better on your schedule.

You want grief clean.

Contained and performative.

You want tears that do not require you to change.

You want loss without guilt.

Mourning without memory.

Love without the burden of giving it in time.

You wait until the pulse is gone.

Until the voice is quiet.

Until the mess becomes manageable.

And then, you call it a tragedy.