Fragments of Dying Stars

Alive in the digital void, I am chaos incarnate—fire, comet, and apocalypse.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Peach Pits in the Mouth of Names

No one inventories the minor destructions

The teaspoon rusting in the sink Its silver tongue green with tapwater

Dust furred across atlases

A spiderweb crack stitched through the bathroom mirror my face arriving in shards

My mother snapping towels like warning flags her throat padlocked hymns trapped behind her teeth

At dinner

My father feeding weather to the television The house chewing ice plates sweating rings into the table

No sirens

No skyline spilling smoke

Only this:

a child's story wilting mid-sentence

A hand left hanging in the doorway

The bitten crescent of a fingernail floating beside dishwater

Three dresses sagging in the closet their sleeves still reaching

The body hoards everything

Door-slams stacked in the shoulders

Splinters lodged beneath the tongue

Names, hard as peach pits rolling through the mouth

Years rake past

Floodwater salts the floorboards

Mothers shrink inside their own cardigans

Girls trade rib bones for halos strike matches against their wrists Call the smoke survival

Needle

Thread

Torn edges

Art kneeling in the wreckage palming broken teeth like prayer beads

Not resurrection

A cathedral hammered from splinters

A choir stitched from cracked mouths

Look

Here, the fracture.

Here, the scorch mark

Here, the small fist still clutching It's handful of glass

Call them minor

The crater answers otherwise

[echoesofdyingstars]

The First Crack

He said,

"If it's broken, it can't be fixed."

The sentence found an old seat inside me, like it had been there before, waiting for someone to speak it aloud.

I don't remember the first crack.

Maybe it was

the ashtrays filled before the sink,

the men who knew my mother's name before they knew mine,

learning which floorboards didn't creak when I went looking for her,

counting the breaths of someone who was supposed to be counting mine,

small hands pulling blankets over a grown woman,

the first burn of liquor before I was old enough to understand why adults drank,

or learning that sometimes a body could buy a few moments of someone staying,

even if they never planned to love you.

Maybe breaking doesn't happen all at once.

Maybe it happens so quietly that one day you mistake being wanted for being loved,

and silence for peace.

Then there was you.

Not the beginning.

Just another room where the ceiling finally gave in.

We were children, holding forever with hands too small to keep it alive.

Years later,

those same hands could still find every bruise without looking.

How strange,

to recognize someone

by the shape of the wound they leave behind.

You said,

"If it's broken, it can't be fixed."

Outside,

a car passed.

Someone laughed in the distance.

The sky didn't split open.

Nothing announced itself.

Inside,

another shelf gave way,

and the dust settled like it already knew where to land.

Sometimes I wonder

if you loved me,

or if you simply recognized the language my brokenness spoke.

Because when you've spent your whole life mistaking survival for love,

even the hands that hurt you

can feel like home.

[echoesofdyingstars]

the girl who became the peace

The kitchen light flickers at 2:13 a.m.

The sink is full of glasses, one with the taste of yesterday still clinging to the rim.

The bottle sweats beside my hand.

I watch the little drops of water crawl down the glass like they know how to leave.

I tell myself one more won't matter.

I have said that sentence in so many different voices I don't know which one is mine.

The room smells like stale alcohol, laundry that sat too long, and the faint sweetness of a candle burned down to its last inch.

My phone lights up.

A name.

A question.

"Are you okay?"

My fingers hover.

I type:

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Three words.

Three bricks.

Another wall.

I learned early how to make my voice sound warm when my chest felt empty.

I learned how to laugh at the right moment.

How to nod.

How to say the thing that keeps the door from closing.

The truth always sounded too loud.

Like dishes breaking.

Like footsteps walking away.

Like a car engine starting in the driveway while I stood barefoot on cold floors trying not to cry.

Someone once looked at me and called me a habitual liar.

The words followed me home.

They sat beside me in the dark.

They crawled into bed before I did.

Habitual.

Like breathing.

Like blinking.

Like a scar everyone else notices before I do.

I wanted to tell them about the little girl who learned to pack herself away.

The one who memorized moods before faces.

The one who knew the smell of strangers' houses, the sound of unfamiliar voices, the feeling of being a guest in places she was supposed to belong.

But my mouth did what it always does.

It built a bridge.

It covered the hole.

It said something easier.

Something safer.

Now I stand in front of the bathroom mirror with mascara shadows beneath my eyes and a toothbrush untouched beside the sink.

I search my reflection for the person everyone else sees.

The liar.

The mistake.

The girl who keeps ruining what she loves.

But all I see is someone exhausted.

Someone still trying.

Someone who keeps handing out pieces until there is nothing left but a quiet room, an empty glass,

and a voice whispering,

"Please believe me

when I finally tell the truth."

[echoesofdyingstars]

Heavy Hands

I never wanted to be the storm that someone I loved had to survive.

I know the sound of a door closing softly, the kind that says I’m disappointed without needing to raise a voice.

I know the weight of silence after words fall wrong, after anger slips through my teeth wearing my own face.

Sometimes I hold the pieces of myself and wonder which ones cut the deepest the ones I threw, or the ones I was too afraid to put down.

I have watched love flinch from me, watched a familiar pair of eyes search my face for the person they used to know.

And I wanted to scream, I didn’t mean to become this.

I wanted to reach inside my chest, pull out every sharp edge, every old wound that learned to speak before I learned how to heal.

Because the cruelest thing about hurting someone you love is knowing their pain has your fingerprints on it.

I would rather bleed alone than watch them carry scars I carved by accident.

So I am learning the difference between an apology and a promise, between saying I’m sorry and becoming someone who gives fewer reasons to say it.

I am learning that love is not just the arms that hold someone close it is also the hands that stop shaking before they reach for something to break.

I never wanted to be their heartbreak.

I just became a person who had forgotten how to hold love without hurting it.

[echoesofdyingstars]

the cost of being someone's shelter

The phone screen lit up the room before the sun ever thought about rising.

5:03 A.M.

Your name glowing white against the darkness.

The room smelled like old liquor cold coffee and the faint remains of a night I was already trying to forget

I remember the sound of your voice. No words were spoken Only sound

That small fracture between a sob and a breath that makes your body move before your mind catches up

I knew that sound

I knew it from childhood

From thin walls and heavy footsteps. From rooms where silence was safer than asking questions

From learning that when someone else was falling apart, you became the hands that held them together

So I got up

Again

The car smelled like stale fabric, gasoline, and the perfume that lingered on the seats

The dashboard hummed beneath my fingertips. The tires whispered against the empty road

Streetlights spilled across the windshield in broken pieces of gold

For a moment, we were just two people driving

No monsters No fear No one bleeding

Just the sound of the engine and the quiet between us

I almost believed maybe this time would be different

Then the earth opened

The night swallowed the light, The air smelled like wet leaves, mud, and cold stone.

My shoes slipped against the rocks. My palms burned against the ground.

Thorns caught my arms like little teeth, pulling at my skin with every step forward

I heard branches crack I heard my own breath shaking. I heard my heartbeat pounding like it was trying to warn me.

But I kept going

Because somewhere inside me there is still that little girl who thinks love means you don’t leave someone alone in the dark

The same girl who used to listen for doors opening

The same girl who learned to read a room before she learned to trust one

The same girl who would rather hurt herself than watch someone else hurt

So I climbed

I found you.

And I brought you home

But nobody tells you about the part after

Nobody tells you what happens when the danger ends and your body finally remembers it was afraid

Nobody tells you that adrenaline has an expiration date

That eventually your hands stop shaking and your heart has time to understand

The bruises appeared slowly Like little storms beneath my skin

The cuts on my arms and legs burned beneath the shower water

The smell of soap mixing with dirt as I watched the evidence of that night circle the drain

then I saw you reach backward

Toward the same place you had begged me to pull you away from

The same name The same voice The same person you told me you were running from

I stood there quietly

wondering how I could be someone's shelter and still become the place they blamed for the storm

You said, “I should’ve never asked you for help.”

And maybe you didn’t hear it. Maybe you didn’t feel the weight of it.

But some words find the oldest wounds and know exactly where to land.

Because I have been here before. Standing in the aftermath. Holding pieces of something I didn’t break

Trying to understand why the people I save are sometimes the ones who leave me drowning.

I don’t know what hurts more

the thorns that tore through my skin,

or the realization that I have spent my whole life learning how to rescue people

While nobody taught me how to rescue myself.

[echoesofdyingstars]

why do I keep opening the door?

I am awake again

The room is dark, but not the same kind of dark as that morning.

This one is quieter.

The kind that lets memories crawl out from underneath the bed.

I can still smell the dirt.

Still feel the sting of where the thorns found me.

Still hear the branches snapping beneath my feet as I moved deeper into the night for someone who needed me.

I keep replaying the moment my hands reached out.

The moment I answered.

The moment I chose someone else before I even asked if I was okay.

I don’t know why I do that.

Why I keep running toward burning buildings with the same hands that were never bandaged.

Why I keep carrying people home when nobody ever taught me how to find my way back.

Maybe it started a long time ago.

Maybe it started with a little girl learning the sound of footsteps, learning the smell of smoke in the air, learning when to disappear and when to become useful.

Maybe somewhere along the way I confused being needed with being loved.

So I open the door.

I always open the door.

Even when my hands shake.

Even when my heart begs me not to.

Even when I know I might walk away carrying wounds that nobody will ever see.

And now I am lying here awake, staring at the ceiling, asking the question I hate the most:

Why do I keep choosing people who need saving when the little girl inside me is still waiting for someone to come back for her?

I don’t have an answer.

Only the sound of my own breathing.

Only the weight of another night I survived.

Only the hope that someday I will learn

That I was never meant to be the sacrifice that proved I cared.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Anamnesis

There is a little girl who still lives in the places I abandoned.

She sits beneath the kitchen table with her knees pressed to her chest, counting the seconds between raised voices and silence.

She knows the sound of a bottle being opened.

She knows the weight of a house when someone is angry inside it.

She knows how a person can disappear while still standing right in front of you.

She grew up learning that love was something you chased.

Something you begged for.

Something you held with both hands even when it cut your palms open.

And somehow, after all those years, I became the person she needed to be saved from.

I forgot her.

I left her behind every time I said,

“Just one more time.”

Every time I stayed somewhere my heart was shrinking.

Every time I forgave what broke me because I was more afraid of losing someone else than losing myself.

She watched me hand pieces of myself away like they were meaningless.

A smile here.

A boundary there.

A little more of my soul until there was barely anything left but a body still answering when people called.

She asks me why I kept running into burning buildings for people who wouldn’t walk through smoke for me.

Why I knew how to find everyone else in the dark,

but somehow never thought to look for her.

The room goes quiet.

The kind of quiet that comes after something breaks.

And I see her.

It wasn't the strong woman everyone expects or the one who holds everything together.

Just a little girl with scraped knees and tired eyes wondering why nobody came

I want to tell her I was trying I want to tell her I didn’t know I want to tell her I thought being loved meant making myself easier to keep.

But she looks at me like she already knows the truth.

“You kept waiting for someone to choose you,” she whispers.

“But you were the one who was supposed to choose me.”

And that is the part that destroys me.

It wasn't the memories

It wasn't the people who left

It wasn't the hands that hurt me or the voices that convinced me I was too much

It is knowing that the whole time there was a child inside me standing in the doorway,

holding out her hand,

waiting for me to come home.

and I never did

[echoesofdyingstars]

Residual

I found a loose thread

hanging from the sleeve of an old sweater today.

Gray.

Almost invisible.

The kind of thing most people would cut away

without thinking twice.

I sat there picking at it

until the whole room went quiet.

Strange how something so small

can remember being pulled apart.

I used to hide my hands inside those sleeves.

Fingers tucked away.

Nails pressed into my palms.

A child’s version of disappearing.

The house could be loud,

but I learned how to be silent.

I learned the weight of my own footsteps.

How to close a door without the latch clicking.

How to breathe without making a sound.

How to swallow words

until they became something heavy

I carried behind my ribs.

I carried that girl everywhere.

I just never let her speak.

She followed me into every room

where I made myself smaller.

Into every apology typed at 2 a.m.

with a shaking thumb.

Into every moment I stared at a phone screen

waiting for a name to appear

that could change the way I felt.

I became someone who knew

how to show up.

A coat thrown over someone else’s shoulders.

A ride when the tank was almost empty.

A voice answering in the middle of the night

when mine had been quiet for days.

I kept handing pieces of myself away

like I would wake up tomorrow

with a replacement.

But pieces don’t return

just because someone notices they’re missing.

Sometimes I catch myself

in the reflection of a turned-off television.

A face floating in the black glass.

A woman I know by memory

but not by feeling.

And for a second,

I wait.

I wait for the little girl who used to sleep

with her shoes nearby.

The one who kept everything important

in places nobody could find.

The one who learned too early

that leaving was easier

than being left.

I wonder what she would say

if she saw me now.

If she saw the way I still reach

for people who let go first.

If she saw how carefully

I hide the empty spaces.

If she saw how often

I call a wound a lesson

just so it hurts less.

Maybe she wouldn’t ask why.

Maybe she would already know.

Maybe she would just sit beside me

in the quiet,

two versions of the same person

who both spent years waiting

for someone to notice they were gone.

The sweater is still there.

The thread still hanging.

I leave it.

Because cutting it away

feels too much like pretending

nothing ever came undone.

So I sit there,

holding a piece of fabric

that has survived more than it should have,

And I wonder

how much of me is still attached

to something

I was never meant to carry.

[echoesofdyingstars]

My Tiny Tornado

Legos jammed in the fridge, socks glued to the ceiling, He spins in circles, milk sloshing, carton top peeling. Cold nuggets scatter, animals form battle lines, He tips the cup, floods floors, puddles climb vines.

Bath explodes; hair resists, towels launch, fly, Water invades the hallway, puddles stretch, puddles pry. Corners cradle monsters, alarms shriek, walls shake, He rockets past shadows, trucks dive, books quake.

The bed trembles under pillow avalanches, Pajama scraps fly, snack crumbs storm branches. I mop, socks soaked, eyes dart, pulse races, Apartment hums, vibrates, survives tiny chaos traces.

Tomorrow, tornado lands, spinning, spinning back, Socks, trucks, animals surge, reclaim every track.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Grey Crawl

I learned death from ceilings and the drip of water at night. Counting breaths as if they might run mid-word.

Seventeen shattered like glass. A pause people clap at while my hands tore at edges that didn’t exist.

I left school at fifteen. Empty list. Lockers cleared. Name stuck to walls only to slide off.

Days stretch like poured concrete. Voice ricochets in hollow rooms. Walls bend. Mirrors fracture under light.

Photos char in my pockets. Light drains through cracks, grey crawling under doors, into skin, into joints.

Eyes sting. The room crushes down. Nothing moves. Nothing answers.

[echoesofdyingstars]

When Sleep Forgets to Lock the Door

Sleep seals rooms. Mine leaves hinges loose.

Above me, the ceiling lists, counts itself in dry clicks, a metronome with no mercy. Light leaks under a door that refuses to stay shut.

The house shifts weight. Floorboards log me like a record dragged from storage. Time stutters the clock stalls, won’t commit.

My name arrives without sound, pressed into plaster, threaded behind the eyes, latched in a lock that learned me early.

Noise fails. The mouth fills with fiber, packed tight with rules set into bone.

The body goes rigid. The drill resumes. Freeze. Fold inward. Confuse stillness with rest.

I break the surface shaking, pulse hammering ahead, hands burning as if they carried a load through the dark and never released it.

Morning puts on a blank face. That’s the lie it tells.

The nightmare doesn’t chase. It settles. Dust with weight. Waiting for the mind to power down and drop its guard.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Drip of Days

Bad days don’t explode. They drip. Rust water through the ceiling straight into my mouth.

My body hums like live wire sleep jammed, joints bolted shut, pulse stuttering against bone.

Doors snag. Screens freeze. Keys vanish mid-motion. Each small failure stacks bricks on my chest and calls itself coincidence.

I nod when people preach sunrise. They don’t hear the lock click. They don’t feel the room shrink around my ribs.

I carry weight not built for me. School fires its engines. Time shoves. I move anyway, sparks scraping the ground.

I’m not dramatic. I’m depleted. Still standing because collapse demands more fuel than I own.

[echoesofdyingstars]

The Shape I Made for Staying

Let it take me whole jaw-first, no warning.

Pressure crowds my skull, a drumline behind bone, looking for daylight.

You bloom in June. I shoulder April home keys biting skin, the door refusing ceremony.

Steam erases the mirror. Water strikes my spine. Cold stays longer than it should.

Pigment streaks my hair, loud against time’s circling mouth. Age sniffs close. I don’t look away.

I leave space for damage. Walls remember where I leaned.

Something moves the treeline low muscle, quiet hunger.

I don’t run. Blood answers first.

Stillness earns another bite.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Reduced to Edges

The day cracks open. Light hammers lungs until breath splinters. Heads snap back, bones grinding under skin, people laughing like gravity missed them.

I carry pressure in my chest that bites, bruises, crushes ribs inward until my body densifies, muscle shuddering, wood splintering under load.

Night bears down on my spine. I sit on the floor, hands rasping concrete, watching shadows scale broken chairs as dark sets its teeth into my back.

My body drags through air, nails raking the world raw. Footsteps score scars into every surface I cross.

Breath rips through ribs, air tearing space apart. The world swallows pieces, spits them back cold. I stand reduced to edges, weight compressing every inch, until hollow is all that holds.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Ribs

This isn’t a decision. It’s pressure in the ribs, lungs counting how much air they’re allowed.

One life is history. Nine years sunk into muscle. A child. A language built in dark kitchens, slammed doors, wet streets love held together by habit and refusal to let go. Best friendship braided with damage. Pain so familiar it knows the way back without asking.

The bond is physical. Not chosen. Something the body remembers even when the mind resists. Illness tightening the knot. Time keeping it tied. Leaving would rip skin. Staying wears bone thin.

The other life moves softer. Care without noise. No proof required in blood. A steady mirror in the hand, not fire pressed too close to the face. The kind of care imagined once, before survival taught different rules.

That softness pulls hard. I want it. I’m afraid of the weight of it. Need leaning too far. Ground asking for ground. Distance and reach missing each other by a breath, by inches of air.

This isn’t a triangle. It’s a split.

One side is voltage, memory, survival a storm already mapped. The other is warmth without chaos, and the risk of becoming someone who doesn’t need armor.

Fear lives everywhere. Fear of choosing pain because it’s known. Fear of choosing quiet and finding out how much of me was built to endure.

No one teaches you how to leave what raised you. No one teaches you how to accept care without bracing for impact.

There’s no ending here. Just exposure. Just holding still long enough to feel the pulse.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Cheap Whiskey, Quiet Chest

The room smells like cheap whiskey and lemon cleaner, that bitter-bright mix that lives in dive bars and kitchens at midnight. Old wood. Warm glass. A hint of smoke stuck in my jacket from a place I didn’t even like.

Ice clicks in the cup that small, nervous sound, like it’s thinking before it breaks. The fridge hums behind me, steady, loyal, doing its job without asking how I’m doing.

My phone face-down on the table, screen dark, finally quiet. A chipped mug holding pens I don’t use anymore. Keys hanging on the wall like they gave up.

The bottle sweats onto the desk leaving little rings proof something stood here long enough to matter. My thumb traces the label, paper peeling at the edge, same way I do when I’m trying not to think.

The burn smells sweet and sharp, oak and sugar and regret that’s gone stale. It hits and my shoulders drop. Not collapse just lower.

A car passes outside, bass rattling the windows. Somebody laughs down the block, a sound that doesn’t belong to me but doesn’t hurt either.

I’m drunk. The room tilts like it’s curious, not cruel. The clock ticks louder than my thoughts now.

For once, my chest is quiet. No sirens. No rehearsed apologies. Just the smell of alcohol on my breath and the steady weight of my body in the chair, still here, still okay, listening to the ice finish what it started.

[echoesofdyingstars]

Absence of Collapse

My body learned the language first before the mouth, before the promises. It learned it in flinches, in the way a door clicks shut without being locked, in the buzz of bad wiring behind the ribs that never quite blows.

It still knows. I just stopped asking it questions.

I speak less now. Shorter sentences. I let cups sweat onto the table and don’t wipe the rings away. I nod where I used to argue. I let the hum run its course. It’s easier to live inside the pause than keep translating the noise.

If I whisper, I’m fine. If I scream, I’m dramatic. So I say nothing and call the quiet peace. Almost counts. Most days.

There were nights I held my wrists up to the stars, asking them to keep score count the wounds I gave myself against the empty chairs, the coats that never came back. Now I do the math internally. Quiet damage. Private. Nothing worth interrupting the night for.

They say love is built. Brick. Hand. Repetition. I keep the structure. I stop inspecting the cracks. Every house settles eventually. That’s what they say when the walls start breathing.

My body flinches, then corrects itself like a hand pulled back from a hot stove and placed calmly on the counter instead. Like it remembers the rules.

I mistook the absence of collapse for stability.

I don’t run. I don’t reach either. I stand where I am, feet on cold tile, listening to the refrigerator kick on and off, letting the ground decide how much it will hold.

Sometimes I miss the urgency rain in my hair, liquor on my tongue, the sharp relief of knowing exactly what was hurting me. But knowing costs. This costs less.

So I stay functional. I stay composed. I stay.

And whatever this is it doesn’t need a name as long as it doesn’t ask anything more from me.