written during a season where survival started to feel like erasure
I am learning
How to step out of my own body
like it’s a coat I don’t want to ruin
hang it somewhere safe
Somewhere you won’t see
because you’d recognize it
You always did
—
you drive
like if you keep moving
This doesn’t exist
like the road can outrun
What I’m about to walk into
It can’t
It just delivers to me
—
I watch your hands on the wheel
and think
These are the same hands
I used to trust
like a place to land
now they just…
let go
right on time
—
Do you feel it?
The moment I leave you
and something in me goes feral and quiet
like an animal learning
How to survive its own cage
I make myself smaller
sharper
less human
something that doesn’t flinch
when touched
something that doesn’t need
to be loved
to function
—
And then I come back to you
half-lit
half-here
stitched together with silence
and whatever pieces I could salvage
Do you notice
the seams?
Or do you just look past them
because it’s easier
than admitting I’m coming apart
in front of you
—
you say you hate it
but your hate is soft
it has no teeth
it doesn’t stop the door from closing
behind me
doesn’t stop me
from turning myself into something
I don’t recognize
just to make it through
—
I am rotting in slow motion
right beside you
And you call it surviving
—
tell me
When you look at me
Do you still see the girl
who loved you like something holy
or just the version of me
that learned how to be handled
without breaking in public
—
because I am breaking
just not where anyone can see
just not in ways
That inconvenience you
—
and the cruelest part
is i would have burned for you
before any of this
would have bled willingly
If it meant we stayed whole
but now
I bleed in places
that don’t even have your name on them
and you still
get to come home to me
like I’m not disappearing
in increments
like I’m not learning
How to live without being felt
even by you
—
I think that’s when love dies
not in fire
But in quiet permissions
in the space between
“I hate this”
and doing nothing
to stop it.