2025

Its nearly 2026 and dam has this year changed me

I feel the echoes of who I was fading behind me,

like a voice swallowed by fog,

like a name whispered into a room that no longer remembers me.

I’ve carried months like bruises,

tender to the touch,

quiet reminders of where hope slipped,

where I did too.

I learned the world can keep turning

even when you’re on your knees,

even when your chest feels hollowed out

and the nights keep chewing through your sleep.

People say “you made it through,”

but surviving doesn’t feel like triumph

it feels like being the last piece of driftwood

after a shipwreck no one saw.

I lost versions of myself this year

some I mourn,

some I buried quietly,

some I can’t forgive for slipping away.

I look in the mirror

and the reflection looks back with tired eyes,

a stranger wearing my memories,

asking me if any of it still matters.

And maybe it does

or maybe that’s just another story I tell myself

so I don’t crumble completely.

But here I stand, somehow,

half-hope, half-scars,

trying to stitch together a future

from the threads of a year

that unravelled me.