58 Names Carved in My

I don’t count the dead by years anymore, I count them by breaths I still struggle to take. By moments when laughter tries to rise and collapses under the sound of another goodbye. 58, Not numbers, Not lessons, Not cautionary tales. 58 human universes that once texted, laughed, fought, loved, stood in my doorway or slept on my couch, called my name like it was safe there. My father gone 13 years yet his absence still has a pulse. A wound that never scabbed, only learned how to whisper. Jen MottaGuedes, 28 years of history, inside jokes older than my grief, a friendship so deep it feels criminal that death could touch it. Katie Flannery, The one who carried me when prison walls tried to shrink my soul. She spoke hope into places that only knew steel and time. I made it through because she refused to let me forget who I was. Chrystal, my ex-girlfriend, but never just that. I loved her deeply, the kind of love that leaves fingerprints on your future. Losing her felt like burying a version of myself that still believed forever was possible. EJ Reid my homie, Demarques aka Quezz another light gone quiet. My cousin taken on Thanksgiving. A day meant for gratitude, now forever stitched to absence. Every year the table remembers what my heart cannot forget. And Randall Godfrey aka Stretch my very best friend. Gone without a goodbye. Gone without my knowing. His mother finding what no mother should ever find two days alone, two months before truth reached me. How does time keep moving when love is still screaming wait? All but three of the 58 lost their lives to addiction. A lifelong war I know intimately. A monster I fought, fell to, got back up from, and somehow, somehow, made it out alive. That’s the part that haunts me. Because if I could crawl out, bleeding but breathing, why couldn’t they? Why did the door open for me and slam shut for them? Why does survival feel so much like guilt? People say, “You’re strong.” But they don’t see the exhaustion behind it. They don’t see the way resilience can rot into loneliness. They don’t see how carrying this much death turns sleep into a battleground. They say I’m part of the collective, one of the chosen, meant to hold light when others can’t. And I do even when my arms shake. But even lighthouses erode. Even the chosen get tired. Even warriors want to lay their armor down and cry without being told they’re brave. Why me? Why does death keep memorizing my name? Why does pain feel like a familiar friend? Why do I survive while so many don’t? I am tired of being the one who makes it out. Tired of carrying stories that end too soon. Tired of breathing for 58 souls who never got the chance. Yet still I wake up With 58 names carved into my chest, each one proof that I loved hard, that I stayed human in a world that kept trying to harden me. If this is the burden of being chosen let it be known, I did not choose the suffering, I chose to live. And some days, that choice feels heavy. But I carry it anyway. For them. For me. For the ones who didn’t make it out. I miss and love all of you!