They said you were too much.
Too loud.
Too soft.
Too strange.
Too broken.

So you went quiet.
Folded in.
Stopped answering to your name.

Your parents didn’t just hurt.
They broke more than bones.
Your friends carved scars.
You stayed in pieces.
The world walked past you.
You stayed still.
Like a glass left on the edge.

But she mattered.
Before anyone looked.
Before they cared.

I watched you shrink.
Corners were safer
Than most people.
I didn’t stop you.
I let you disappear.

Then you came back.
You laughed.
I kept it like a coin.
Your voice—shifting when excited—
I remembered.
No one asked me to.
I just did.

The little things vanish.
But not from me.
You mattered.
Before they said so.

They were wrong.
You weren’t thunder.
You weren’t pain.
You were a person
Wanting to be seen.

Stand.
Even if no one holds you.
Even if the sky looks away.
I will hold you.
Even if I can’t fix it.
Just pretend I can.

You mattered.
You always did.
And I wish I said it.

I caught you holding tight,
A teaspoon waltzing in your cup.
And you smiled like the world -

Hadn’t already taken too much of you.
I could say, "help yourself."
In front of a cake, half-heartedly sliced.

Under the worn wood table,
I won't let you paint a shade of doubt
Between your smile and what you said: “I see.”

To bring my tissue on the way out—
The one that knows what I meant,
The one that tries to keep you.

I'd have to walk on the line
Of "only when I want to."
Or "because you promised me."

You are my world,
But I’m not what the world needs.
And I—I would be just fine.

You are my tangerine,
Brimming bitter-sour
Across the wretched, dusty room.

And you brought me
An orange touch of sun
Glitter glowing on my skin.

To wake wide in the morning,
Curtain dances with fresh air
Into my smoker's lungs.

Even to my deathbed remains
The scene of you that will
Leave me between the walls

Of longing and regret.
And to my morning sunlight,
I will never become better.

I say to you, my tangerine,
You are my very will to live,
And to die, if I cannot save you.

Do you hear me when I sleep?
As I hold on to your gentle hand,
While winter’s first dust settles on our heads.

To live in a false dream,
Yet still, I long for the warmth of coffee
between you and our furry friend.

And to die by your side,
such a soft, forgiving way to leave
This earth, so full of quiet ghosts.

I whisper your name beneath my dreaming eyelids,
And my eyes, flickering, seem to glow with the pulse of rem-embering
The day I’ll die a thousand silent needles.

Do you hear me say it, your name, in my dream?
It was always you within the aurora lights,
The one I cling to, between sleep and wake.