The floor gave out
But I didn’t
I stood there with a mouthful of dust
Like it was air
Okay to choke
The walls peeled off their faces
Showing nothing but cracked bone
And hollowed out promises
I touched the silence
It burned like rust on open skin
No crash
No bang
Just the slow grind of everything
Falling apart quietly
Until even the debris forgets
It existed
I stayed to watch the mildew
Become a new kind of home

We dress the wreckage
Hang fairy lights in the ruins
And call it ambiance
Throw words like 'Resilience' at bleeding walls
To feel like we survived on purpose
We stitch apologies on shirts we outgrew
Paint over scorch marks
With pastel hope
And act surprised when the fire
Still smells like us
We prop the broken door open
With books about healing and call it art
A metaphor
Anything but what it is
Grief in a new dress
Still dragging the same bones

This body is a rental with claw marks
I've worn it as a costume
A form of armour
A question I'm too tired to answer
They keep handing me mirrors
Like I'm supposed to say 'thank you'
But I know what lives beneath my ribs
A storm
A voice that never learned quiet
Some days
I move like this second hand skin
Wasn't stitched from other people's expectations
Other days
I send out smoke signals
From a war I didn't start
Still
I show up
Bruised
Blistered

Confessions never seem to come
They hover bluntly in the throat
I think they're afraid
Of the rot
That grows in words unspoken
A quiet mold
Blooming behind the teeth
Between the maybe
And the nevermind

You think silence is mercy
But it has claws
And they dig in when the lights go out
I've waited for softness
That doesn't arrive
For a sentence with a full stop
Not just breathless withdrawal

The resentment simmers and curdles
Every memory turns to vinegar
In the gut
The sharpness turns inward
Every word a shiv I swallow
Like a storm in the mouth
Lethal even without the screaming
My pain delivered in whispers
Through a voice trained to stay quiet Until it splinters

And when it finally breaks
It won't sound like rage
It will sound like a crack in the drywall
Like something old slowly giving way
Obedience trained to carry grief
It seeps into the environment
Taught to flinch
To fold
To stay

What did it cost you
To feel nothing while I choked on
Everything you wouldn't say?
If pain was currency
I could buy you back in full
Hell,
I could buy a better ending
Where you don't just stand there
Like a bystander
To our wreckage