For the Ones Who Don't Vanish

I’ve dreamed of disappearing clean,

no note, no thread, no break in seam.

A stillness drawn in waxen blue,

the kind you almost don’t live through.

The world would tuck its breath away,

and time would yawn and not obey.

I’d go where names don’t echo back,

where memory forgets to track.

But I don’t vanish. Never could.

Too full of unfinished good.

Too tangled in the laugh you left

half-hung between a cry and breath.

I carry love like phantom weight,

no tomb, no shrine, but still, I wait.

I mother ghosts. I write them beds.

I kiss them on their paper heads.

Some nights I lie like lake ice, thin.

So still, I trick the dark to grin.

It thinks I’m hollow. Not quite there.

But underneath, the heat’s unfair.

I don’t burn soft. I don’t float light.

I want a life that’s wrong but right.

One made of spite and hope and ache,

a holy mess I didn’t fake.

I wasn’t built to disappear.

I wasn't made to leave no smear.

Even my silence has a stain.

Even my leaving clings like rain.

So if you find me: cracked, not gone,

don’t fix me. Just hum me a song.

One verse for every scar I earned,

one chorus for the way I burned.