It takes strength to look inside,
To figure your stand—
Your war, your battles,
And to surrender.

To understand that pain—
No matter the site,
The origin,
The type—
Still stings the same
When the world moves on without you.

To see you're the only one held back,
While life goes on like nothing cracked.
Your agony?
Whoosh—
Gone with the wind
Of other people's better days.

But it takes a hero—
A Hugo for you—
To know:
This is your fight alone.

That moving forward
Doesn’t always mean healing.
That sometimes,
Standing still
Is surviving.

I’ve always been a crooked road,
Lain with thorns,
While roses watched in silence from the side.
I let myself go—
Unraveled,
Each choice trembling
At the whisper that choice should bend
To circumstance.

They say I should shift—
Mirror the view.
But when I do,
The real me starts to panic.

She is a storm unprobed,
A force better left unnamed.
I walk contradiction—
Each truth I am
Cancels out another.

But still, I remain.

I won’t drain my cup
For hands that never pour.
And I don’t expect the same—
I don’t want to be poured from an empty cup too.

Top of my game,
Top of my aim,
Top of my speed —
You crave that.
Down on my game,
Down on me,
You shun that.

Silence. Echoes.
I love them.
They remind me
Of loneliness.

Dark clouds — those days —
Gift me
A clearer view
Of my circle.

Groveling through snow,
Through fog,
I understand
Why most company
Means nothing.

If I once gave
A Cheshire smile,
Played the jester —
I can't now.
Not until I’m fixed.

So when I get the urge
To saunter away —
Do you blame me?

Should you fill my shoes,
Or allow me
To make the decision
For us — alone?
Should you be my light
When it's pretty sketchy,
Or wait —
Hoping I fix myself?

Because maybe,
Just maybe —
To saunter past you
Is the best
I can do.

You were told —
You're rookies.
Interns.
Bottom of the food chain.
Nothing you do matters
Mainly by nobody's
Not your nights, not your notes,
Not the weight in your chest
When a patient won’t wake.
You all think you’ll change the world,
They laughed.
Fast forward—
Reality checked in cold scrubs.
Now you own everything.
If it’s broken,
It’s on you.
If it heals,
You get no name.
No thanks.
What’s wrong?
You.
What’s right?
You feel good, maybe.
But don't get cocky.
You keep tabs.
You pass info—
Forward, backward,
Up the chain,
Down the drain.
And maybe—
just maybe—
you won’t make a **** difference.
No statues,
No speeches.
No glory.
But if you do nothing...
If you bow out—
It might tinge your soul.
Not with fire.
But with a quiet,
Lasting rot.
So suit up.
You’re still a rookie.
But you showed up.
And that
still
means
something.

Being resurrected feels—
over the top.
Not a soft bloom from cocoon to wing,
but a clash—good and bad
in a lover’s war dance,
polar opposites snapping in place.

It doesn’t ease you,
it jolts.
Eyes torn open
to galaxies stitched in silence,
to a world behind this world,
or maybe beneath,
or maybe so small
it hums in your atoms.

You glimpse what most can’t—
a wisdom not taught
but poured,
an empathy not for them,
but born within—
a private ache,
a knowing.

It carries weight, yes,
but mostly,
liberation.

That this bubble—
this self-made sky—
is just big enough
to hold your world alone.

Just you.
And that is enough.

I'm different—
I get it.
I don’t speak the way you do,
I eat diversity for breakfast,
I don’t act like your mirror.

But I’m human.
Equally important.
Equally supreme.

Give it a rest—
I demand order.
I demand respect.
I should be treated as such.

I don’t wear inferiority
Like a badge I didn’t earn.
I won’t sit with minds
That think I’m beneath them—
When we all know
I’m the opposite.

You judge my roots
Like they shame me—
But they feed me.
They bloom strength
You’ve only ever tried to steal.

It’s a joke to you—
But my kind don’t spend their days
Belittling you.
They have positive change
They need to make
With their time.

To extricate myself from thoughts
That drown me—
Isn’t harm.
It’s healing.
It’s clear water.

Where I grow
Is not your prison of fear.
It’s the place
They wish they belonged—
Because I carry
What they could never hold.

As messed up as it is,
I like the overbearing kind—
The ones who shadow me like breath,
Their weight, my unexpected muse.

Attention—
Always on my back,
A strange comfort
Like pressure that says I see you.

It’s weird, I know.
But when we’re not connected,
I unravel.
No deal.
No spark.

I don’t know how to care for myself.
But someone else who figures it out—
They hold my key.
Not in chains,
But in knowing.

And when I’m quiet,
Not hyping you,
Not clinging to your orbit—
I’ve already let go.
You’re not my safe space.

But if I smother,
If I breathe you in like air too close—
It means you’re human to me,
Just like the rest.
Not sacred.
Not mine.

Only real.
Only fading.