Life Sentence

I keep saying I’ve been going through something

As if it’s a hallway,

As if there’s an exit sign,

As if movement implies progress.

That’s a lie.

For 9,067 days

There has been a vacancy where my center should be.

Not emptiness—

Absence.

Like a tooth ripped out of the soul

That never stopped bleeding

And never stopped being useful to chew with.

I move through the world unfinished.

People don’t notice at first.

They just say I look tired.

It is exhausting

To carry a self, unfinished.

Some days it feels less like living

And more like serving a sentence

For a crime I don’t remember committing.

This is who I am.

And when that makes other people uncomfortable,

I swallow pills

So I can become a version of myself

That fits inside their expectations.

They say this is the real me.

It isn’t.

It’s a stand-in.

A cardboard cutout with better posture.

The real me waits underneath,

Pressed flat,

Listening.

I hear her constantly.

I feel her in my skin,

Smell her like rain on rust.

She is always there,

Watching me perform stability

For an audience that would probably leave me

If I stopped.

And tonight,

Somewhere between the beers and the bars,

I sit on a bench

And the thought arrives fully formed:

I understand why people kill themselves.

Not because they want to die—

But because living this incomplete

Starts to feel like a cruel administrative error.

Because if incompleteness is permanent,

Hope becomes a scam.

If I must chemically sand myself down

Into someone easier to love,

Easier to tolerate,

Easier to keep around—

What is the god damned point?

But don’t worry.

I’m not dramatic enough to die.

I’m too tired.

As I said—

It takes an incredible amount of energy

To keep existing

Like this.

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