Something lives inside me
that is neither flesh nor soul.
It does not weep,
it waits,
feeding in silence,
gnawing the marrow
from within.

This is no sorrow,
sorrow has a voice.
This is the hush of a crypt,
the suffocation of earth
piled on a coffin
that still contains breath.

My smiles are glass shards,
arranged carefully
to mimic life,
but behind them
is a theater of ruin.
Each word I speak
is dragged bleeding
from a throat of rust.

Sleep brings no refuge,
only corridors of ash,
mirrors that fracture,
rooms without doors.
I wake not to light,
but to the weight
of another endless night
disguised as day.

The pain is rootless,
yet everywhere,
a shadow with no body,
a plague with no cure.
It is a name I cannot utter,
a hymn without sound,
a wound without blood.

I walk among the living,
but the grave has already
learned my shape.
And still,
I keep moving,
a funeral procession of one,
carrying the ghost
of who I was
to nowhere.

©️ Dark Water Diaries