where silence drowned the poets.

take me to the lakes,

where poets gave their agony names,

whispered them to the wind,

and watched the water swallow every syllable.

show me the place

where ink bled into waves,

where they laid their trembling hands

on the edge of their ruin

and begged for the silence to take them.

tell me—

did the tide feel like freedom

or just another weight?

did the sky weep for them,

or was it as cold and unflinching

as the world they wrote for?

their metaphors were never wings,

only chains dressed as art,

pulling them further into themselves,

into the abyss they tried to escape.

isn’t that what it means to write?

to crack yourself open,

let the pain spill out,

only for others to call it beautiful—

a masterpiece of suffering.

but no one asks

how much it takes to hold on,

how much it takes to let go.

take me there,

to the graves of unwritten stanzas,

where the poets finally stopped pretending

their words were enough.

let me feel their ghosts,

the ache they left behind,

and maybe, just maybe,

i’ll find the courage

to stop breathing ink,

to stop writing at all.

REMI.