The Year I Stayed

I almost let go.

Not of life

but of the version of me

who still believed in mornings.

There were days I didn’t speak,

but the silence wasn't peace.

It was me,

cracking quietly

beneath the weight of being unseen.

Loneliness sat beside me

like an old friend I didn’t choose,

eating with me,

sleeping in the shape of the bed

I never filled.

But something inside

something I can't name

refused to disappear.

It said:

stay.

Just stay.

And so I did.

Not gracefully.

Not with hope.

But with a kind of stubborn heartbeat

that kept going

even when I wasn’t sure

why.

Now, I look back

and see it:

not failure,

but strength

the kind that doesn’t glow,

just endures