Hope Holds The Knife

“You don’t want to hurt me?”

That ship has long since sailed,

rotted at sea somewhere behind us,

its wreckage still washing onto my shore.

The pain does not end

when the day folds into darkness.

Night is not mercy.

It only gives suffering quieter hallways

to walk through.

Every evening it finds

some untouched piece of me,

some patch of skin or fragile thought

that has not yet learned

to fear the blade.

And without hesitation,

it tears flesh again.

Everything hurts.

But then you stand beside me

and suddenly I am weightless.

Like gravity forgets my name.

Like sorrow was something

I invented in loneliness.

Your voice softens every wound,

your presence numbs every ache,

and for a moment

I can pretend I survived you.

Then you leave.

And my real senses come rushing back

like floodwater through broken doors.

Every lie I rehearsed for myself,

every warning, every boundary,

every attempt to let go,

collapses the second

you come near me again.

I bury my feelings alive

for scraps of fleeting happiness.

Tiny moments I stretch thin

until they tear in my hands.

I trade permanent peace

for temporary warmth,

knowing full well

I will freeze afterward.

The last nail in the coffin?

Hope.

Hope is a dangerous thing.

People speak of it like salvation,

but they never mention

the blood beneath its fingernails.

Hope is the hand

holding the knife steady

while it carves deeper and deeper.

Because I hope for things

that will never come.

I hope for feelings

that will never return.

I hope for a future

built from ghosts and imagination.

And somehow,

despite knowing all of this,

I still hold hope close to my chest

like it is not the very thing

killing me slowly.