How We Disappear — The Lives We Almost Lived
Return to the Center
I keep moving as if motion could answer me. I keep reaching as if distance could make me whole. But every road curves inward. Every question returns. Return to the center. Not to who I was. Not to who I should be. Return to what is true. Let the old walls shake. Let the old names fall. Let the false strength leave my hands. I will not disappear.
Which One Is Mine?
I have a voice for strangers, a voice for people I love, a voice for being certain when I don’t know enough. There is a version of me who never gets tired. She answers every message. She carries everybody and never asks who carries her. Which one is mine? When nobody needs me, which one is mine? I DON’T WANT TO BE USEFUL TONIGHT. DON’T ASK ME TO KNOW WHAT TO DO. LET ME BE DIFFICULT. LET ME BE UNCERTAIN. LET ME HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU. AND STAY.
Meeting Him Fully
I spent years blaming shadows for the shape of every room. Every closed door had a culprit. Every silence had a name. There are habits dressed as instincts. There are fears dressed up as truth. There are wounds that learn to speak with your own voice. I kept looking for an enemy. I kept waiting for a sign. But some of the walls around me were built with my own hands. Growth isn't climbing above who I was. It is meeting him fully and choosing what I carry forward.
After the Weather
The storm passed without asking me what I had learned. Morning came anyway, indifferent and white, laying its flat hand on the pavement. After the weather there is the room. After the fear there is the body. After the noise there is the next breath. I DON'T NEED A SIGN. I DON'T NEED A WITNESS. I CAN BEGIN WHILE NOTHING FEELS FINISHED. I CAN BEGIN FROM HERE.
Wake Me Before I Stop Noticing
I know this street too well now. The same light on the same windows. The same hands reaching for the same things. And that is what frightens me. Not pain. Not failure. Habit. There are whole years that can disappear without making a sound. And suddenly later has a history. WAKE ME BEFORE I STOP NOTICING. I WANT TO FEEL THE WEIGHT OF THIS DAY. I WANT TO KNOW I WAS HERE. NOT JUST MOVING. NOT JUST REPEATING.
If There Is Still a Heart
The city keeps breathing through broken glass. Lights stay on in rooms no one enters. Somewhere a machine is still working. No one remembers why. I walk past windows filled with blue light. Faces without voices. Hands without touch. Everything connected. Nothing close. If there is still a heart here, let it speak. A breath. A pulse. A small refusal to disappear.
Let The Dark Keep My Name
A red light blinks in the kitchen. Three seventeen. The building hums like it remembers someone else. The city changes one screen at a time. New signs. New towers. New passwords. Same loneliness under better lighting. That face in a black phone screen before it wakes— for half a second—has no story. DON’T TURN IT ON. NOT YET. LET THE DARK KEEP MY NAME A LITTLE LONGER. No signal. No reflection. No demand.
Beautiful Way to Disappear
I woke up with the television talking to an empty room again, selling me another better version of the person I could have been. We found a beautiful way to disappear, keeping everything we love just near enough to see. I can reach the whole world from here, but I can’t remember the last time the whole world reached me. I DON’T WANT ANOTHER VERSION OF MYSELF. I WANT MYSELF. THE ONE WHO GETS BORED. THE ONE WHO GETS SCARED. THE ONE WHO DOESN’T PHOTOGRAPH EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING.
Under the Same Sky
There was a time I thought distance could make things clean. Change the room. Change the city. Change the name. But the same sky kept following me. I carried every unfinished thing not as memory, but as weather. As pressure. As a low note under everything. I WILL NOT RUN JUST TO CALL IT CHANGE. LET THE SAME NOTE COME BACK AGAIN. LET ME HEAR IT DIFFERENTLY. Same sky. Same question. Different ears.
Come Through the Noise
Static in the ceiling. Blue light on the floor. Your voice cuts in and out like it doesn’t live here anymore. We built a language out of waiting, out of almost, out of maybe. Every signal fades. Every signal fades. IF YOU’RE STILL THERE, COME THROUGH THE NOISE. Cut through the static. Cut through the voice. I don't need perfect. I just need something that feels like you are here.
I Want to Stay
I keep changing the room and calling it progress. Different walls. Different names. Same window I refuse to look through. I know the architecture of every excuse I make. How many endings have my fingerprints on them? I KEEP ASKING WHO DID THIS TO ME WHILE MY HAND IS STILL ON THE KNIFE. NO MORE DISAPPEARING. NO MORE MAKING A HOME INSIDE THE WOUND. NO MORE WORSHIPPING THE VERSION OF ME THAT ONLY KNOWS HOW TO ENDURE. If I remove the armor and there is nothing underneath— then let me start there. I want to stay. I WANT TO STAY.
Slowly
Nothing broke at once. No single night, no final word. Just small decisions made quietly until they became a life. I kept waiting for some great moment to change me. It never came. Morning came. Then morning again. This is how we become—slowly. This is how we disappear—slowly. THEN LET IT BE SMALL. ONE HONEST WORD. ONE OPEN DOOR. ONE THING I DO NOT RUN FROM. Tomorrow is made of very small things.
