Friendship
Can you hear me, my friend.
I let them hold the keys—
my heart, my trust, my fragile peace—
and watched the floor fall out beneath
the life I thought was mine.
Three years—was it really so long
since the world spun away from me?
Since I begged for reasons
and got only silence in reply?
They said, \"It\'s not you,\"
but when you’re the one left staring
at the blank wall, at the empty phone,
how can it be anyone else?
Neighbors\' eyes turned sharp as frost.
Friends\' voices vanished like smoke.
Even my own four walls grew cold—
a house is not a home when you’re its only ghost.
There’s a panic that starts in the throat,
claws through your ribs,
whispers that you don’t belong,
not anywhere, not even in your skin.
Do you know what it is
to be discarded, to be unseen,
to reach out for someone—anyone—
and touch only emptiness?
Even the dreams betray me;
I wake up drowning in dread,
the nights too long, the days too loud,
the world a place I cannot go.
Months passed. Apologies came—
too late, too light, unable
to glue together what they shattered.
Some things are not so easily returned.
I have learned not to search for love
in hands that drop you when you’re heavy.
I have learned that solitude
can be crueler than any wound.
Still, I breathe. I wait.
I make a home of small mercies:
a quiet hour, a cup of tea,
the hope that pain is not the only truth
But trust—
that’s gone, like the sunlight
I used to know, before fear
chained me to these walls.
If you see me, know this:
I am more than what they left behind.
I am the ache, the survivor, the quiet
still searching for the worth in staying.