The Quiet Death I Chose


I love you yet I cannot look at you,

my own eyes betray me,

my own spine refuses to hold me upright,

as if even standing near you demands a courage I no longer have.


Some days I wish I could vanish,

not out of drama

but out of the quiet exhaustion of carrying a feeling

that only dies inside me, never around me.


I wish I could drown this memory in liquor,

forget your smile in the bottom of a glass,

let the burn replace the ache,

let the numbness silence everything your presence wakes.


But instead I freeze.

The coldness you give off

moves through my body like winter settling in bone,

slow, steady, merciless.


One quick glance at you

and the entire world inside me collapses.

I know I am wrong for feeling this deeply,

wrong for wanting something you never promised,

wrong for wishing your smile belonged to me.


You still smile.

Just not for me.

And it hurts in a language I will never be fluent in.


Maybe I was never anything to you.

Maybe I mistook your kindness for something sacred

because I have never known the bare minimum

and you offered me just enough light

to make me believe I mattered.


I want to ask if you are okay.

I want to knock on the silence you’ve wrapped around yourself,

but the fear of disturbing your peace

holds my throat shut.

What if I am the one you wish you could avoid,

the one whose presence drains you,

the name you’d prefer not to hear again.


And when you look past me

as if air has more weight than I do,

I feel myself disappear.

A ghost waiting for a place to haunt

but finding no doorway open.


I thought I had finally found a reason to exist.

I thought your voice meant something permanent,

but it vanished before I could even hold it.

Gone.

Clean.

Without explanation.


Maybe this is what is meant for me,

to love in a way that empties me,

to hope in a way that humiliates me,

to stand in the ruins of something

that was never mine to begin with.


Maybe I am a fool.

But even fools bleed honestly.


And I still believe

love is the slow immolation of self,

a quiet burning you cannot stop,

a fire you walk into willingly

even when you know

you were never the one they would turn back for.


I don’t know what becomes of me after this.

I only know the ache remains,

and so do you,

somewhere I can no longer reach

but never stop feeling.


In the end all I carried was the truth that never reached you

What is love if not the slow immolation of self !!!