Damnation

I Wake With Hatred

I wake before the sun does,
water on my skin,
toothpaste on my tongue,
another uniform draped over a body
that moves because it has memorized survival.

The bus rolls forward,
people laugh, curse, scroll, pretend,
and I sit among them
feeling nothing
except the sharp rusted blade
of hatred turned inward.

Not for my face—
I buried that war long ago.
I know I am ordinary,
a man stitched together
from average looks and average intellect,
yet cursed with eyes
that see too much.

I notice everything.

The fake smiles stretched too thin,
the desperate need to be liked,
the subtle disrespect hidden inside polished words,
the way people cross boundaries
then act surprised when you bleed.

I see it all.

And somehow,
despite the lies around me,
I feel like the greatest fraud alive.

Because I hate them for pretending,
while I pretend every single day
that I am okay.

Maybe that is the cruelest joke—
that I envy their ignorance,
their ability to move through life untouched,
while my mind tears itself apart
quietly, methodically,
behind closed teeth.

There is not a single day
where death does not visit me
like an old friend.

Sometimes it arrives as headlights
swerving too fast into my lane.
Sometimes as stray bullets
finding me in the wrong place.
Sometimes as cold steel pressed to my skull,
a final silence waiting
one pull away.

Not because I crave attention.
Not because I want pity.
But because I am tired—
tired of carrying a hatred
I cannot even explain.

And still,
I remain.

Not out of hope.
Not out of happiness.
But because leaving
would wound the people who love me,
and because somewhere deep inside me
the fear of sin still breathes.

But more than that—

there is her.

A girl whose existence alone
keeps the dam from breaking.
A girl I love enough
to suffer one more sunrise for.

So I continue.

Step after step,
day after day,
dragging this aching soul through time,
waiting for either healing
or collapse.

And maybe that is what scares me most:

that one day
the weight of my own mind
will finally become heavier
than my reason to stay.