Sometimes I feel my insides have dried;
I am only three percent alive—yet still alive.
Three percent alive is still being alive.
I won't say I’m doing terribly;
I've been lying dead for so long.
To be clear: only three percent of me breathes—
and even that is life.
No one speaks, as if nobody’s there,
but there’s one mercy: I don't have to hide how I feel.
Everyone assumes I’m gone.
No—perhaps I’m only three percent alive;
even that is being alive.
Someone left? I don't bring them back,
I keep no watch for anyone now.
I walk the world’s circumference, far from the center.
It doesn't hurt—I'm numb, as if already dead.
Truth is: I am still alive.
Even three percent is still life.
Some days, the light inside feels like it's dimmed to a mere flicker. It's not that you're completely gone, but you're operating on a fraction of what you used to be. You feel dried out, distant, and miles away from the center of your own world.
In these moments, it's easy to believe the narrative that you've disappeared entirely. But here is the gentle, stubborn truth: even a three percent existence is still an existence.
You don't have to pretend to be at a hundred. You don't have to perform vitality for anyone. There is a strange, quiet freedom in this minimal state. No one expects much from a ghost, and that can be a relief.
So if today you are only three percent, hold onto that. It is not nothing. It is a foundation. It is the single ember from which an entire fire can be rebuilt. The fact that you are still here, feeling this hollow, means you are still here to feel something else another day.
Be kind to that three percent. It is fighting for you.
