It doesn’t happen all at once.
There’s no big moment.
No screaming breakthrough,
no sunrise epiphany.

It starts small—
you stop replying.
You let the silence stretch.
You let their words hang
without catching them.
You stop needing to explain
why you’re tired.

You learn to sit with the truth—
it’s ugly,
but it doesn’t lie.
It just stays,
quiet and whole.

Some nights,
you still run through old conversations,
still catch yourself
rehearsing what you should have said.
But the sting softens.
You start to realize
you weren’t weak.
You were just hoping too hard
that someone would meet you
in the place you built for them.

You start turning inward.
Not in a self-blaming way,
but in a healing way.
You remember the parts of you
they never saw,
the ones they couldn’t twist.

You begin to speak softer
to yourself.
Not every day—
some days are still tight with anger.
But others feel
like breath.

And slowly,
the weight of their lies
becomes something you carry
less.

You start to see yourself
not as someone they fooled,
but as someone who survived
being fooled—
and chose
not to stay fooled.

You don’t need closure.
You don’t need revenge.
You just need
peace.

And for the first time
in too long,
you believe
you might actually find it.

Some days I wake up
and the first thing I feel is dread.
Not fear, not panic—
just this low,
gray hum
that says
“you again.”

I don’t scream.
I don’t cry.
I just sit there,
staring at the ceiling
like maybe it’ll collapse
and do the job for me.

I move like a ghost with a job.
Shower, maybe.
Eat, maybe.
Talk, fake it, smile, nod.
Everyone’s proud of how “strong” I am.
They don’t see the rot behind the eyes.

I laugh at the wrong times.
Not because I think it’s funny—
but because
what else is there?
What the fuck else do you do
when you’ve felt dead for years
but you’re still standing?

I don’t want advice.
Don’t want mantras,
meditations,
some clean little quote
about healing.

I want to feel something real
that doesn’t cut.
I want to sleep without begging my brain
to shut the fuck up.
I want silence
that isn’t full of knives.

But I don’t ask.
Because I know what they’ll say.
They’ll look at me
like I’m broken
but fixable.

I’m not.
Not right now.
Maybe not ever.
But I’m still here,
and that
has to mean something.
Even if I don’t know what.

The mountain doesn’t kill you out of malice.
It kills you because you were there.
Because you were soft.
Because you believed in meaning.

You show up wrapped in layers—
nylon, steel, faith—
but underneath it, you’re skin,
wet and warm and fragile.
The mountain is not.

It is older than memory,
older than grief.
It watched the first fire,
and the last breath of men
who thought they were gods.

You don’t fall because you’re weak.
You fall because gravity doesn’t care.
Because ice doesn’t feel your hands
slipping.
Because a storm doesn’t pause
to let you decide
whether you want to live.

It takes you
without ceremony.
No music, no message.
Just a clean snap
of bone on rock,
a muffled scream
lost in wind.

And when you’re gone—
really gone—
the mountain stays the same.
Unmoved.
Untouched.
Perfect in its violence.

Someone will ask,
“Why did they climb?”
Someone will say,
“They died doing what they loved.”

No.
You didn’t die doing what you loved.
You died
doing what didn’t care if you lived.

Before names,
before even light—
there was a weightless waiting.
Not peace. Not chaos.
Just the ache of becoming.

Then, something shifted.
A crack in the stillness,
so small it might’ve been a question.
And that was enough.

The universe poured out,
not in order,
not with a plan—
just the raw spilling
of what could no longer be held in.

Stars flared like sudden thoughts.
Planets stumbled into orbit.
Time unfolded,
confused but determined.
And we—
we came much later,
soft and breakable,
but hungry to know.

We gave the dark a name.
We mapped what we could,
believing in beginnings
because we feared ends.

But everything loops.
Even entropy,
even death.
Black holes don’t swallow—
they remember.
They wait.

One day,
the stretch will end.
Galaxies will slow their dance,
curl inward
like tired fingers
into a closing fist.

And when the last light folds in,
when silence returns,
not empty this time
but full of memory—
maybe it won’t be loss.

Maybe it will be return.
Maybe the universe
never left where it started.
Maybe we are the echo
of a breath
still being held.

There are nights
I don’t know how to be a person—
when my body feels borrowed,
when I can’t remember
what safe even means.

And then—
your hand,
just resting on the back of my neck.
Not pulling, not fixing.
Just there.

No one tells you this,
but sometimes love
isn’t soft or sweet—
sometimes it’s heavy.
Like the weight of your arm across my chest
when the panic won’t let me sleep.

I don’t need poems about stars
or soulmates.
I need someone who understands
that when I say “I’m fine,”
but I flinch when I say it—
that means hold me tighter.

Touch is the first language I learned
and the only one I trust
when the world goes quiet.

I have been broken
in places no one can see—
but you trace those fractures
like a map,
and somehow,
without a single word,
you tell me
I still belong to something.

Your hand on my back
when I’m falling apart
is more sacred
than any prayer
I’ve ever said.