Ashes and Scars
IDENTITYSELF REFLECTIONRESILIENCY
Steel chains press into my shoulders.
The air tastes like smoke and copper.
Time doesn’t move forward anymore
it carves,
it cuts,
it takes.
I’ve traded myself away for scraps.
And all I hold now is ash.
Their handshakes are empty.
Their promises collapse before they’re even spoken.
The lies come dressed as kindness.
The smiles come sharpened.
Every day is a negotiation with pain.
Every night a compromise with loneliness.
I am tired.
Not tired like sleep.
Not tired like rest.
I am tired in my marrow,
in the space between my ribs,
in the part of me that still remembers what hope used to feel like.
Heartbreak is a hammer that never stops falling.
Suffering is the constant static,
always buzzing,
always there.
Happiness hangs just out of reach
mocking,
fading,
withdrawing whenever I stretch toward it.
This is not exhaustion.
It is erosion.
The slow grinding down of a soul
against the teeth of a world that never stops demanding.
And yet
I keep walking into the fire.
I keep shouldering the weight.
Because the only thing worse than the fight
is the silence that waits if I ever lay it down.
I am tired beyond sleep.
I am broken past repair.
But I am still here.
Ashes and scars.
Steel and smoke.
That’s all that remains.
And it will have to be enough.
