They didn’t slam the door.  
They just stopped walking back through it.  
And somehow,  
that silence broke louder  
than any goodbye.

I still keep the light on—  
not because they’re coming back,  
but because some part of me  
believes in ghosts  
that look like second chances.

Sometimes I hear their voice  
in a room they never entered,  
feel my hands reach  
for a warmth that no longer answers.

I don’t forgive what they did.  
But I’ve forgiven the shadow  
that lingers on my porch  
like a memory too soft to bury.

I keep the light on.  
Even when it flickers.  
Even when I’m the only one  
who ever sees it.

Because somewhere in the dark  
is still a version of me  
that believes in return  
without expectation.

I don’t miss them.  
I miss the shape I became  
when they looked at me  
like I mattered.

I miss who I could almost be—  
before the weight of leaving  
taught my reflection to flinch.

Now,  
I carry echoes that don’t belong to me.  
Laughter I didn’t laugh.  
Affection that calcified  
somewhere between memory and myth.

I keep their names  
in the soft part of my mouth—  
not to speak,  
just to feel  
the wound hum back.

Loss isn’t always absence.  
Sometimes it’s residue.  
The kind that won’t wash out,  
even when the body tries to forget  
where it bled.

Sweat stings my face—  
not from effort,  
but from holding it together  
too long.

Something’s gone quiet  
deep inside.  
Not peace.  
Just absence.

My heart feels hollowed  
by repetition.  
Even pain gets bored  
when it’s expected.

I’m suffocating  
under normalized collapse.  
Spacing out like it’s ritual.  
Fading  
like my body forgot how to stay loud.

Ran thinned.  
Worn through.  
Care spilled out  
and didn’t come back.

There’s no scream.  
Just dust in the throat.  
Just me,  
still here,  
watching the nothing pile up  
like it might mean something again.

There isn’t one of me.  
There never was.

I am a constellation of echoes—  
names I wore out,  
faces I reshaped in panic,  
versions of self collapsed in each other’s arms.

Each fragment learned how to breathe  
before the rest could speak.  
Each survived  
the moment I didn’t.

We don’t always agree.  
But we carry the weight together.

Sometimes I wake in a different voice.  
Sometimes I forget which pain belongs to which part.  
But we are all mine,  
and none of us were chosen.

Don’t ask who I really am.  
That’s the wrong question.  
Ask:  
who held the memory  
when I couldn’t anymore?  
Who took the blow  
so one of me could stay soft?

We fracture to remain whole.  
We rebuild in ruin.  
This is not disorder.  
This is design.

They said,  
“time heals everything.”  
But I bled out in the waiting.

So I opened the promise like a body—  
scalpel truth,  
steady hands,  
no anesthesia.

What I found inside was worse  
than emptiness.  
It was intention.  
A fabrication shaped like comfort,  
wrapped in silence  
so we’d never call it cruelty.

This lie was passed down—  
ritualistic,  
well-meaning,  
loaded with poison  
sweet enough to swallow.

I kept it in my chest for years.  
Let it nest between lungs  
as if belief was supposed to bruise.

Now I extract it  
line by trembling line.

Even hope can rot  
if left unsaid too long.

They told me confusion was weakness.  
But I’ve made temples from tangled thoughts.  
Scriptures written in static.  
Faith practiced in contradiction.

My truth doesn’t wear straight lines.  
It spirals—  
curved like grief,  
crooked like survival.

Inside this head,  
reality is a negotiation.  
Each thought barters  
with the one before it—  
nothing certain,  
everything sacred.

I forget who I was yesterday,  
but I remember the sound  
of my own scream  
echoing through  
fractured time signatures.

It’s not madness.  
It’s devotion.  
To endure  
in chaos  
and still hum  
my own name.

So when I say I believe in nothing  
but motion,  
fracture,  
and delirium—

Understand:  
this is my doctrine.  
This is my rite.

They only see the version  
that didn’t scream.  
The one who smiled  
because silence had sharper teeth.

Behind this grin:  
razorwire laughter,  
polished to deflect inquiry.  
A thousand masks  
stitched from survival.

I learned to dance  
in venom shoes—  
every step a negotiation  
with ghosts no one else sensed.

It’s not deception.  
It’s preservation.  
A camouflage of grace  
in a world that punishes visible pain.

But under this costume,  
the truth foams at the seams.  
Grief behind gloss.  
Fury in a silk-lined sigh.

This is the masquerade  
you demanded I wear.  
But I warn you—  
the fabric’s unraveling.

And when it falls,  
don’t flinch at the fangs.  
They were always there.  
You just didn’t want to look.