Score |
3
Student @ Babcock University
The Rot within
<p><br/></p><p>Something in me died the day you left.</p><p>Still, unmoving, dark.</p><p>A hole, insatiable, ever-expanding,</p><p>feeding on the life-giving energy of everything I was.</p><p>The sun within, dimmed.</p><p>Not extinguished.</p><p>Dimmed so I still wake,</p><p>still dress,</p><p>still answer when they call my name.</p><p><br/></p><p>A black hole where my heart used to be,</p><p>pulling inward joy, memory, appetite, colour.</p><p>The last laugh I remember having,</p><p>was the one you drew from me.</p><p>Now laughter feels like trespassing,</p><p>on a grave I haven't named yet.</p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p><p>It's been long.</p><p>People are starting to smell the rot.</p><p>The distance from society,</p><p>the way I leave rooms before I arrive in them,</p><p>the quivering arms and stuttering tongue,</p><p>that fumble at the simplest 'hello'</p><p><em>how are you?, how are you?, how are you?</em></p><p>Fine. Fine. Fine.</p><p><br/></p><p>A word I've worn so thin</p><p>you can see through it now.</p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Do you smell the rot?</p><p>Not the rot of flesh,</p><p>but of a self that stopped updating,</p><p>a version of me that crashed the night you left,</p><p>and no one noticed the blue screen.</p><p>Do you smell it?</p><p>The singed edges of unlived mornings,</p><p>the mildew of plans we made</p><p>that I still haven't had the heart to undo?</p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Oh, your disappointment.</p><p>I see it land before your words arrive.</p><p><em>You should be further along by now.</em></p><p><em>You should be healing.</em></p><p><em>You should be—</em></p><p><br/></p><p>I am on my knees.</p><p>Not in prayer.</p><p>Not in surrender.</p><p>Just on my knees,</p><p>because standing requires something,</p><p>I buried with you.</p><p><br/></p><p>They want me upright.</p><p>Tie straightened, shoes polished,</p><p>grief folded neatly into a pocket no one can see.</p><p>But grief is not a pocket.</p><p>It is the coat itself.</p><p>It is the skin beneath the coat.</p><p>It is the marrow beneath the skin.</p><p><br/></p><p>I force the smile.</p><p>It sits on my face</p><p>the way a wound wears a bandage,</p><p>covering, not healing.</p><p><br/></p><p>The burnout is not tiredness.</p><p>Tiredness yields to sleep.</p><p>This is the weariness of carrying</p><p>a corpse of mine while everyone watches</p><p>and calls it living.</p><p><br/></p><p>Something in me died the day you left.</p><p>And I am learning slowly,</p><p>on raw and bleeding knees,</p><p>that grief is not the end of love.</p><p><br/></p><p><em>It is love with nowhere left to go.</em></p><p><br/></p><p>A black hole? Yes.</p><p>But black holes were once stars.</p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p><p><em>And I was. God! I was a star.</em></p>
5
Other insights from Potato
Referral Earning
Points-to-Coupons
Insights for you.
THE MEETING
Sometimes it takes one meeting for our lives to change forever. It was never Femi'...
1332 views
14 upvotes
14 comments
OMÓ ÉSAN
They say the apple does not fall far from the tree, but I was the exception, or I was s...
1257 views
15 upvotes
7 comments
Comments