The hardest part isn't hurting. The hardest part is realizing that the people who swear they know you best can watch you fall apart piece by piece and never notice you're breaking. So tell me... How do you not see it? How do you look at me every day and not notice the pieces of me that have been falling apart for so long? How do you hear my voice and not catch the exhaustion hidden between the words? How do you listen to me speak without hearing all the things I'm too afraid to say out loud? How do you not notice that my smile has become a habit, a performance, something I put on for everyone else because it's easier than explaining why I can't seem to carry myself anymore? How do you not see the way my eyes linger a little too long on the ground, the way I stare into nothing when my thoughts become too loud, the way I go quiet when there's too much inside me to put into words? How do you not notice the nights I barely sleep, The mornings I struggle to get up, the way every day feels like I'm carrying a weight no one else can see? How do you not see the hurt I've hidden in plain sight? The jokes that weren't really jokes. The "I'm fine" that wasn't true. The moments I stopped talking because I knew no one would hear what I was actually trying to say. How do you not notice that I don't talk about my future the way I used to? That I don't get excited the way I once did? That some days I am only surviving, not living? How do you not see the loneliness? Not the kind that comes from being alone, but the kind that comes from being surrounded by people who never look closely enough. The kind that settles in your chest and makes a home there. The kind that follows you everywhere, even into crowded rooms, even into conversations, even into the arms of people who swear they care. How do you not notice when my heart is breaking In ways that leave no visible scars? How do you not see the tears I never let fall, the words I bite back, the questions that keep me awake long after the world has gone to sleep?

There’s something missing, not loud enough to name, but heavy like it never left. It lingers in the quiet parts of me, in the spaces between breaths. Like I almost had something, something warm, something that knew me, and then it didn’t. Now it just aches. Not sharp, not enough to break me, just constant, like a bruise no one can see. I reach for it sometimes without thinking, like my body remembers what my mind won’t. But there’s nothing there. Just that hollow pull, deep in my chest, stretching wider every time I notice it. I think someone was supposed to stay. Or maybe I was supposed to be someone worth staying for. Either way, it left something behind, this quiet, restless emptiness that won’t let me forget there was more than this. And I hate it, how I miss something I can’t even prove was real.

Something in me never left that moment. It stands there, half-turned like a door that didn’t close all the way and everything after just keeps brushing past it. I keep reaching but not forward. More like into something already disturbed like water that hasn’t settled since you moved through it. There’s a shape of you that won’t disappear. Not solid, not gone, just... impossible to hold. I try anyway. My hands come back full of nothing and the faintest trace of what used to be warm. Even silence sounds different now like it’s carrying something unfinished, like it’s waiting for a word that already missed its moment. I think I live there now, in the space right after where everything almost happened and never will. Where time keeps circling but never lands and you... you exist like a second too late no matter how many times I replay it. No matter how carefully I stand still. As if stillness could undo it. As if staying could bring something back that never chose to remain. But nothing rewinds. Not the way you turned, not the space you left, not the version of me, that almost reached you. It all keeps moving, except this. This stays... like a breath I never finished, like a step I never took, like I’m still standing there, while the moment keeps living on without me.

I don’t scream, I swallow it. Every sharp word, every shaking thought, every please just listen to me gets shoved down like it never mattered. My throat is a graveyard. You wouldn’t know that though, I’ve gotten good at smiling with a mouth full of ghosts. There’s something violent about being this quiet. Something wrong about how I can feel my chest pounding, begging, say it, say it, say it and still nothing comes out. Just silence. Just teeth sinking into my own tongue to keep it all inside. I taste iron more than I taste relief. And the anger, God, the anger, it doesn’t leave. It festers. It curls up in my ribs, sharp and restless, scratching, like it wants out like it deserves out like I deserve to be heard, but I don’t let it. I never do. So it builds. And builds. And builds, until I feel like I might split open just to prove there was something inside me worth saying.

Did I make a sound? Falling into the darkness Screaming loudly, While everyone was passing by Did they hear me? Was I not loud enough or Did they just not care? As each day passes by I fall further and further away Hoping someone hears Hoping someone notices Hoping someone cares... But no one turns. No one stops. No one reaches out. I reach anyway, Hands empty, Heart heavy, Voice fading Into the same silence That follows me everywhere. And I keep falling. Still screaming. Still hoping. Still waiting.