Buried Beneath the Ruin

I buried hope where light doesn’t reach,

past the places my hands know how to search,

down where memory dulls into pressure

and silence feels permanent.

I told myself it was safer there,

locked tight, sealed shut,

a chest beneath layers of hurt

no feeling could survive.

But grief has a strange sense of timing.

Just when the weight on my chest begins to lift,

when breathing doesn’t feel like theft,

I feel it.

Wood scraping against the inside of my ribs,

that buried thing rising again.

Hope.

Not gentle, not kind.

It claws upward,

dragging your name with it,

dragging every almost, every what-if,

every version of us that never quite died.

I reach for it,

I always do.

But the moment I touch it,

the ground gives way.

It drops.

Back down.

Deeper than before.

Taking the air with it,

taking me with it,

and I collapse into the hollow it leaves behind.

This is the cycle:

hope resurfaces,

pain reminds me why I buried it,

and I become the aftermath.

Because you don’t leave me.

Not really.

You linger in the spaces I can’t clean,

in the moments that stretch too long,

in the part of me that still believes

love is worth the damage.

Half of me reaches for you

like a reflex I never unlearned.

Aching to unlock that chest,

to let everything spill out,

no matter how much it ruins me.

The other half stands back,

arms crossed,

tired,

knowing the truth doesn’t change

just because I miss you.

And I am stuck between them.

Between holding on

and finally letting go,

between digging

and walking away from the grave I made myself.

Hope is still down there.

And I don’t know

if I’m afraid to lose it forever,

or afraid

of what happens

if I finally bring it back to the surface.