The Last Excuse

It is me versus the world.

Don't tell me otherwise.

Don't stand there and preach about choices

when you don't carry what I carry.

It is the people who leave.

The people who lie.

The people who promise forever

and disappear before forever even has a chance to exist.

It is every hand that lets go.

Every door that closes.

Every opportunity that somehow belongs to someone else.

It is grief.

It is betrayal.

It is the years I never get back.

It is the nights that make me grow up before I'm ready.

It is the world that breaks me,

then has the audacity

to ask why I don't know how to put myself back together.

So yes.

I blame them.

I blame fate.

I blame time.

I blame circumstance.

I blame every person

who teaches me what pain feels like

and then expects me to become gentle because of it.

How could I not?

They hand me the wound...

then expect me to heal it.

They light the fire...

then ask why I smell like smoke.

So I stand here,

arms crossed,

heart barricaded,

declaring war on everything

that has ever happened to me.

Because if it is me versus the world,

then surely the world

is the reason I never change.

Surely the world

is the reason I never move.

Surely the world

is the reason I remain exactly where I am.

...

But every morning...

the world wakes up

and keeps moving.

The people I blame

keep living.

Time refuses to stop.

The only thing still standing

in yesterday...

is Me.

And I hate that.

I hate that no matter how justified my anger is...

it doesn't make me take one step forward.

I hate that blame explains me...

but it never changes me.

I hate that every excuse I make

is another day

I stay exactly the same.

Because the people who hurt me...

they don't wake up

and decide whether I become better.

I Do.

The world doesn't choose

whether I get out of bed.

I Do.

The past doesn't decide

whether I change today.

I Do.

And that realization

doesn't feel hopeful.

It feels like someone rips the last excuse

out of my hands.

Because if no one else

can make Me change...

then no one else

can stop Me from changing either.

The war I keep screaming about...

isn't the war I'm actually fighting.

I keep shouting,

"It's me versus the world!"

while quietly losing

Me Versus Me.

The Me that wants to become

versus the Me that wants to remain.

The Me that reaches

versus the Me that retreats.

The Me that dreams

versus the Me that waits.

Every single day,

Me Versus Me.

And every day I choose comfort over courage...

Me Defeated Me.

Every day I hide behind another excuse...

Me Defeated Me.

Every day I convince myself

that tomorrow will somehow be different

without Me being different...

Me Defeated Me.

The world didn't win.

My past didn't win.

The people who broke me didn't win.

Me Defeated Me.

But maybe...

just maybe...

one day I wake up,

look the man in the mirror in the eyes,

and for the first time,

the one who chooses discipline

is louder than the one who chooses comfort.

The one who builds

is stronger than the one who blames.

The one who refuses to quit

finally buries the one

who always does.

And when that day comes,

I won't say

"I defeated the world."

Because I never could.

I'll simply smile,

take one more step,

and whisper,

Today...

Me Defeated Me.

Bitter Bread

My bread came out a blackened shell,

It wore the scent of things that fell.

Not ruined,no, it still remained,

Just nothing like the loaf I'd named.

I dreamt of warmth, of tender air,

Of finding something gentle there.

Instead I held, with quiet dread,

A hardened thing I'd made instead.

The oven cooled. The silence grew.

There wasn't anything to do.

No careful wish, no borrowed grace,

Could soften what the fire embraced.

So I broke the crust with steady hands,

The way one learns what life demands.

Not out of courage, not from pride,

There simply was no place to hide.

Each bite was dry, each swallow slow,

A lesson I already know:

Some things don't fail enough to end;

They merely linger, never mend.

It's strange how disappointment stays

Long after smoke and ash decay.

Not sharp enough to make you scream,

Just dull enough to haunt your dreams.

The loaf still filled the hollow space;

It simply lacked all warmth and taste.

Enough to live another day,

Not enough to call it good.

Tomorrow waits beyond the night.

They say I'll get another try.

Perhaps I will. Perhaps I won't.

Perhaps the recipe was wrong.

So I'll knead the dough with practiced hands,

Go through the motions as they're planned.

Not chasing hope, nor fearing dread,

Just baking yet another bread.

Tonight I chew what's left of mine,

Each bitter mouthful keeping time.

The loaf is mine. The fire is too.

And hunger

rarely cares

what you wished

it had been.

I'm Not Going to Lie to You

I'm not going to lie to you.

I think the first funeral I ever attended

never really ended.

People buried my father.

They forgot to bury the boy

who kept waiting for him to come home.

So he stayed.

He's still here.

Still listening for a voice

that memory can almost imitate,

but never quite reach.

I'm not going to lie to you.

Everyone says grief gets lighter.

Mine didn't.

It just learned my routines.

It waits in empty seats,

in Father's Day,

in the moments I accomplish something

and instinctively wonder

who I would've called first.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I don't think I grew up.

I think I surrendered.

There is a difference.

Growing up is supposed to happen slowly.

I woke up one morning

and childhood had already packed its bags.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I have spent so much of my life

trying to become someone worth keeping

that I don't know who I am

without someone else's approval.

Every medal.

Every title.

Every compliment.

Every ounce I lose.

Every smile I force.

Every promise I keep.

I lay them at people's feet

like offerings,

hoping this time

they won't leave.

They leave anyway.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I remember every person

who taught me that love

can have an expiration date.

I remember the promises.

The forevers.

The rings.

The plans.

The names I thought

would one day become family.

Now they're just echoes

that know my voice

better than I know my own.

I'm not going to lie to you.

The part that frightens me

isn't losing people anymore.

It's how quietly I've begun expecting it.

When someone says they'll stay,

somewhere inside me

another voice whispers,

"Not for long."

I'm not going to lie to you.

I hate how easy it has become

to disappear inside myself.

To answer messages.

To laugh at jokes.

To stand in crowded rooms.

To do everything

a living person is supposed to do,

while feeling

like I am watching someone else

borrow my face.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I don't think numbness

is the absence of pain.

I think it's pain

that has forgotten

how to introduce itself.

It no longer knocks.

It owns the house.

I'm not going to lie to you.

Sometimes I catch myself

trying to remember

what excitement felt like.

Not happiness.

Excitement.

That restless feeling

of believing tomorrow

might carry something beautiful.

I remember having it.

I don't remember losing it.

Only noticing

that it was gone.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I carry guilt

like other people carry wallets.

Everywhere.

Always.

For things I couldn't fix.

People I couldn't save.

Love I couldn't force myself to keep feeling.

The child I never got to be.

The man I still don't think

I've become.

I'm not going to lie to you.

If you asked me

what loneliness feels like,

I wouldn't tell you

it's an empty room.

I'd tell you

it's realizing

you've become so accustomed

to carrying everything alone

that when someone asks,

"How are you?"

you genuinely don't know

where to begin.

So you don't.

I'm not going to lie to you.

Sometimes I wonder

how much of me

is actually me,

and how much

is just scar tissue

shaped like a person.

Because scars don't disappear.

They simply become

what the body calls itself

after surviving.

I'm not going to lie to you.

This isn't a plea for pity.

It isn't wisdom.

It isn't resilience.

It's only the truth

I've spent years swallowing

because I didn't know

who could bear to hear it.

I have spent so much of my life

trying not to become a burden

that I became invisible

to myself.

And I still don't know

which loss

came first.

They built a cathedral

where Justice stood in white stone,

her eyes wrapped in weathered cloth,

her hands suspended above an iron scale.

The architects called it perfection.

The worshippers called it truth.

And every soul who crossed its threshold

was promised

to be measured

by nothing

but the weight

of their deeds.

I believed them.

Until I noticed

the blindfold

was frayed.

Not torn.

Not discarded.

Just loose enough

to glimpse

the outline

of whoever stood beneath it.

One glance

just one

and iron forgot how to be iron.

The chains leaned.

The balance sighed.

One burden was wrapped in linen, handled like shattered porcelain, its fractures counted one by one.

The other

was handed another stone,

and another,

and another,

until its chains began to scream.

The priest called it equal judgment.

The echoes called it something else.

Outside,

the storm arrived.

Rain fell without asking names,

lightning struck without reading faces.

Yet somehow,

when morning came,

one broken tree became a tragedy,

while another was condemned

for falling through someone else's roof.

The wind never made that choice.

Only those watching from dry ground.

Deep beneath the altar,

where incense could no longer hide the scent of rust,

I found the foundation.

Not marble.

Not granite.

Expectation.

Layer upon layer,

pressed into stone

by generations who taught the walls

that some cracks

were proof of fragility,

while others

were proof of guilt.

The cathedral never questioned it.

Stone rarely questions the hands that shape it.

But stone remembers.

It remembers every feather that was treated like an anvil.

Every mountain dismissed as something its bearer should have carried better.

Every prayer that was answered.

Every prayer

that was told

to endure.

Now the pillars tremble.

Not because truth has grown weaker

But because truth has become too heavy

for a scale

that has forgotten

how to stand level.

And still the bells ring.

Louder.

Louder.

Louder.

As though enough noise might drown out the sound

of iron

bending.

Tell me

When the cathedral finally collapses,

will they mourn

the stone?

Or will they finally ask

who loosened

Justice's blindfold

in the first place?