linesoflament

[linesoflament]

I never bother to heal.

Healing takes effort,

and effort is something

I gave up on long ago

When something cracks,

I tape over it with distraction.

When it splinters deeper,

I turn away, pretend it’s not there.

I build new routines

around the wreckage,

like setting the dinner table

in a burning house

The rot creeps in quietly—

I let it.

I adapt to the smell,

breathe in the mold,

convince myself it’s not that bad.

It’s easier this way.

Not better,

not safer,

but easier.

No confrontation, no pain—

just slow disintegration

in silence.

And still, I stay,

watching myself decay

like an old wound

that never stopped bleeding.

[linesoflament]

I think of myself as a leech sometimes,

sucking down affection

like it’s owed to me,

like it’s air,

like it’s blood,

and giving nothing in return.

I smile and nod and pretend,

but it’s never real—

just a gaping, gnawing hunger

for something I don’t deserve.

I know how this story ends.

They always pull away,

peeling me off

like something rotting and ugly,

like something they regret ever touching.

I expect too much.

I demand it without words,

tightening my grip even as they struggle,

watching them slip away

and feeling only bitter, biting resentment

that they didn’t stay.

I never make it easy.

I never try to be better.

I just wait,

and expect,

and rot,

until there’s no one left but me,

hungry and hollow,

still wanting more.

[linesoflament]

They say empathy is a virtue—

but I’ve never known a crueller thing.

The worst people i’ve met

call themselves “empaths”

with pride in their voices

and blood on their hands.

They speak of sensitivity,

of feeling everything too much,

as though it absolves them

of the damage they cause.

But what could be more vicious

than understanding pain

and choosing to keep inflicting it?

Apathy is distance.

Ignorance, at best.

But empathy without compassion

is violence dressed in softness.

It’s a knife that knows that it’s sharp

and presses anyway,

because it knows exactly

how deep it’ll hurt you.

[linesoflament]

They say love should be balanced,

measured—

a quiet thing that fits in daylight

and doesn’t make a scene.

But that’s not love.

That’s convenience dressed in sentiment.

They love the idea of love—

roses and smiles

and textbook affection,

but they recoil from devotion

with teeth and trembling hands.

Call it obsession. Call it toxic.

Unable to face it’s the truth.

Real love is ruin.

It is collapse.

It is two people choosing destruction

with hands clasped tight,

knowing full well they’ll burn.

Because true love does not fade—

it crashes.

It claws and begs and stays

until nothing is left but bones

and the echo of what once

refused to be anything less

than everything.

[linesoflament]

They speak of love like it’s holy,

as if it were clean—

a white cloth in the rain,

never stained,

only softened.

But love is not pure.

It is jagged, it is red,

it bruises skin and warps minds.

It makes people do things

they’d never admit aloud.

Love carves names into bones,

not always gently.

You can bleed because someone loved you.

they can scream, hit, break,

and still mean it—

still look at you with eyes

full of devotion and ruin.

And that’s the thing no one says out loud:

the pain doesn’t make it not love.

It just makes love real.

ugly.

violent.

human.

[linesoflament]

My brain was built to hand out rewards

carefully,

proportionate,

fair.

A breadcrumb trail of dopamine

if I work hard enough.

But somewhere along the way,

I learned to trick it.

A click.

A scroll.

A sip.

A bite.

The illusion of effort.

Cheap fireworks in a hollow sky.

I taught myself to feel good

for doing nothing.

And now,

everything real feels dull.

My brain shrugs at real progress,

withholding the sugar until I break.

And I don’t know how to fix it.

How to untangle the wires.

How to want something again

without the instant high,

without the shortcut.

I broke the machine

and now it only wants to be broken.

[linesoflament]

Life moves around me,

but I do not move with it.

I watch from the edges,

where it is safe,

where I cannot disturb the delicate balance of things.

People speak,

and I listen.

People act,

and I react.

But I do not reach out first.

I do not place myself into the current,

only let it push me where it pleases.

It is safer this way.

If I do not touch,

I cannot break.

If I do not step forward,

I will not stumble.

If I do not make myself known,

then no one can hate me for it.

No one can turn their gaze upon me

with anger,

with resentment,

with disappointment.

I have learned that

I do not belong within the story.

I am only meant to witness,

to observe,

to stay silent as life unfolds

without my interference.

I do not know what it would be like to change that.

I do not think I ever will.

[linesoflament]

I want to be an idol.

I want to stand beneath the blinding lights,

let them carve me into something brilliant,

something untouchable.

I want to be adored,

worshipped,

held on a pedestal so high

that they forget I am flesh and bone

beneath the glittering facade.

They would love me,

but not me.

They would love the idea of me—

the perfect, shining thing

they’ve built in their minds.

A fantasy wrapped in silk and stage lights,

smiles rehearsed to perfection,

every word carefully chosen

to keep their love from slipping through my fingers.

One wrong move, one slip,

one slip,

and love turns to hate in an instant.

Worship curdles into venom,

adoration into betrayal.

They would call me fake,

a liar,

a disappointment.

But wasn’t I always?

Wasn’t that the role they wanted me to play?

Still, I would take it.

The love,

however hollow.

The devotion,

however fleeting.

Because even if it’s not real,

it’s better than nothing at all.

[linesoflament]

The pupil can never turn inward.

I cannot see myself—

not truly.

I can catch glimpses in reflections,

but mirrors lie,

shifting with the light.

I can listen to my voice,

but recordings twist it,

warping it into something unfamiliar.

Others look at me and tell me who I am,

but their words are shaped

by who they want me to be.

So who am I?

Am I my memories?

They fade,

distort,

rewrite themselves in the recesses of my mind.

Am I my opinions?

They change with time,

with experience,

with the weight of the world pressing in.

Am I my feelings?

They rise and fall like the tide,

never constant,

never still.

I am a thousand different versions,

each one crafted by the eyes that see me.

I am the quiet one

the loud one,

the kind one,

the cruel one.

I am whoever they decide I am,

and none of them are wrong,

yet none of them are right.

[linesoflament]

People say love and hate are opposites,

but I don’t believe that.

Hate is too intimate,

too consuming,

too similar to be the opposite of love.

Love curls around your thoughts,

wraps itself through your ribs,

takes root in the spaces between your breaths.

And hate—

it does the same.

It lingers, festers,

refuses to leave.

Both demand attention,

both sink their claws deep

and refuse to let go.

Love can make you obsessed;

so can hate.

Love can ruin you;

so can hate.

The true opposite of love is indifference.

Not caring at all.

No fire, no ice,

no burning, no freezing.

Just nothing.

Hate keeps someone in your mind,

in your heart,

even if it twists everything

into something bitter and sharp.

But indifference?

That’s true absence.

That’s erasure.

That’s forgetting they ever mattered at all.

[linesoflament]

If I peeled myself apart,

layer by layer,

how much could I strip away

before I was nothing?

If I tore off my name,

my voice,

the way I speak—

would I still be me?

If I erased every habit,

every little quirk,

would there still be something left?

Or would I be a hollow shape,

a body moving through the world

with no claim to identity?

What if I went further?

If I carved out my fears,

my loves, my anger, my grief—

if I stripped myself down to raw,

directionless emotion,

unshaped by memory or meaning.

Would I still be a person?

Or just a vessel of feeling,

no more than instinct wrapped in flesh?

I wonder, sometimes,

if “self” is just a construct,

a patchwork of experiences and expectations.

If you unravel it all,

if you take away everything learned

and everything given—what’s left?

Anything at all?

[linesoflament]

Nobody dragged me back.

Nobody pulled me by the wrist

or forced my feet to move.

I walked there myself,

willingly,

knowingly.

It hurts, but it’s a pain I recognize.

A dull ache I can settle into,

like slipping on an old, well-worn coat.

It fits too well.

The weight of it presses against my wrists,

familiar in its heaviness.

No one told me to return.

No one had to.

I knew the way by heart.

Knew the way pain curls around my arms

and settles into my bones.

Knew how easy it was to sink into something

that never truly left me.

It doesn’t feel good.

But it feels like home.

[linesoflament]

I left my mug on the windowsill overnight,

forgotten, like most things in my life.

In the morning, I found them—

ants drowning in the cold remnants of my tea,

their tiny bodies suspended

like dark stars in a pale universe.

Were they desperate for sweetness?

Did they even know what they were diving into?

I think about them,

how they reached for something they didn’t understand

and died for it anyway.

[linesoflament]

Morality is a relative concept,

a shifting tide that no one person can hold in place.

What’s right to you

may be wrong to me,

and who decides where the line is drawn?

Is it the loudest voice in the room,

the one with the most power,

the one with the sharpest tongue,

the one who’s able to sway the masses?

But even then, the line moves again—

what was right yesterday

can be wrong tomorrow.

Laws change, rules bend, and in the cracks,

the truth splinters into pieces too small to hold.

What’s considered moral today

was once a crime,

and what’s considered a crime today

was once the norm.

So who, really, has the right to claim

they know what’s truly right or wrong?

Maybe it’s just the way we’re wired,

to cling to what feels safe,

to convince ourselves that our way is the only way,

the only truth that holds weight.

But what if it’s all just a game,

a set of rules that we made up

to make sense of the chaos around us?

An arbitrary line drawn in the sand

by people who claim to know better—

but still, there’s no certainty,

just shifting sands.

Morality is a relative concept,

and no one person can dictate its shape,

because we’re all just trying to survive,

to live by whatever rules we’ve constructed

to make ourselves feel safe,

even if we don’t really know what safety is.

So, we fight over what’s right and wrong,

but in the end, it’s all just perception.

[linesoflament]

I want to be killed by something that loves me.

Not carelessly, not out of anger or indifference,

but in utter devotion, the kind that burns through marrow.

I want hands that shake as they hold me,

not from fear of what they’re about to do,

but from the weight of their love—

too much to contain,

too much to endure.

Let it be brief, as all true things must be.

Let it strike quick, before the moment tarnishes.

I don’t want love that lingers,

that stales with time,

or fades into resentment.

I want love so intense it must destroy

or be destroyed.

For in that last moment,

before my breath stutters and stills,

I will belong completely.

No doubts, no cracks, no chance for it to sour.

True love, the kind that devours whole,

can only survive in brevity.

It cannot last, it was never meant to.

Let me see it in their eyes as the end comes,

this perfect, unrelenting adoration.

Let it take me apart, wholly, completely,

and I will welcome it.

I will fade knowing I was treasured,

if only for a heartbeat.

[linesoflament]

I keep losing parts of myself.

They fall away like autumn leaves,

some brittle and dead,

some still soft, still green,

but they all go just the same.

Sometimes, it’s the anger that slips out first,

the sharp edge that cut others but protected me.

Sometimes, it’s the laughter,

the easy kind that used to spill from me

without hesitation.

I lose both, but the silence feels heavier.

There’s a piece of me—

a child who used to dream without limits,

a voice that didn’t yet know how to apologize for existing.

I think I lost her long ago.

I don’t know if she slipped away quietly

or if I ripped her out myself

to make room for something sharper,

something harder to break.

But the better parts of me go, too.

The warmth that wanted to hold the world

with open hands,

the kindness that forgave too quickly,

the hope that never learned how to stay.

They rot away slowly,

leaving hollow spaces in their absence.

The worse parts linger longer—

the bitterness, the doubt,

the resentment that curls in corners,

but even they can’t last forever.

One by one, they crumble,

leaving me with less than I had before.

What’s left?

A hollowed-out shell of something

that used to feel whole.

Every loss feels like a theft,

but I can’t blame anyone but myself.

This decay isn’t accidental.

It’s a slow, deliberate unraveling.

Maybe I thought I could survive

on what remained.

Maybe I thought I could rebuild myself

with the scraps left behind.

But some parts are too vital to lose,

and I’ve let too many slip away.

I wonder if there’s anything left to save.

If I could gather the rot,

stitch it back together with trembling hands,

would it still be me?

Or would it be just another hollow attempt

to hold onto something already gone?

I keep losing parts of myself.

And I don’t know how to stop.

[linesoflament]

“How would you like to be remembered?”

The question feels like a trap,

a test I never studied for.

They want me to say something poetic,

something profound—

to build a monument out of words

and carve my name into their minds.

But I don’t want that.

I don’t want to linger like a ghost in their memories,

haunting the edges of their lives.

I don’t want my face to flicker in their dreams

or my voice to echo in their quiet moments.

Let me vanish.

I want to be forgotten,

slipped between the cracks of their days

like loose change lost in the couch cushions.

No statues, no stories,

no mournful glances at photographs

fading at the edges.

Because remembrance feels heavy,

a weight I never asked to carry.

To be remembered is to be held captive

by someone else’s expectations,

their nostalgia rewriting who you were,

until the truth is so far away

that it feels like a stranger.

Let me go,

like smoke dissipating into the air.

Let my name dissolve into silence.

Let the things I’ve said and done

scatter like ash in the wind.

I don’t need to be a legacy,

don’t need to matter in the grand scheme of things.

There’s peace in being forgotten.

No one asks what I would have wanted.

No one tries to make me larger than I was.

I can rest in the quiet,

in the nothingness,

without the weight of being remembered.