i tore the safety net myself, strand by strand, chewed through it like something feral that didnāt want saving. now thereās nothing beneath me, just the long drop and the sound of my name forgetting how to echo. it used to mean something when i said it. now it dissolves in my mouth before it ever reaches the air.
my eyes wonāt stay shut anymore. they peel open, raw, dragging in a world that wonāt blur no matter how hard i beg it to. everything is too sharp, too realālike broken glass pressed behind my ribs, shifting every time i breathe. i can feel it cutting me open from the inside, slow and deliberate, like it has nowhere else to be.
my hands donāt belong to me anymore. they wander like grave robbers, digging for something buried just beneath the surfaceāpulse, vein, proof. i need proof iām still here. something that says this body isnāt just a hollow thing pretending to live. but all i find when i search myself is rot, something soft and ruined where something vital should be.
the fire i built to survive eats like it hates me. it doesnāt warmāit consumes. it licks bone clean, leaves nothing worth keeping, and still i curl around it like a dying thing, pretending warmth and ruin are the same. pretending i chose this. pretending iām not afraid of how easily it could finish the job.
the storm never passes. it lives in my lungs, howls when i breathe, floods when i speak. i am soaked through with it, heavy with something i canāt set down. even silence isnāt quietāit just waits, thick and suffocating, for me to make the mistake of thinking iāve escaped it.
i tried to outrun what i became, but it walks in my skin, wears my teeth, calls itself me. it knows all the ways to stay hidden in plain sight. i canāt scrape it out, canāt bleed it clean, canāt carve far enough to reach whatever i was beforeāif there ever was a before.
now i am something wicked with time, something worn thin, like a blade that forgot what it was meant to cut. dull, but still dangerous in the wrong hands. and still, i keep falling, like i deserve the ground. like there was never anything meant to catch me in the first place.
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
dededos
origamiaround
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
snowghoul
