You Make A Home Here

You come back quietly.

Not all at once. Not in a way that warns me. You slip in slowly, almost gently, like something that knows exactly where to find me. At first, it is small enough to question. A shift in my body. A stillness that lingers too long. A heaviness I try to explain away.

But then I feel you.

And I know.

You don’t ask for space. You take it.

You move through me in a way that feels both unfamiliar and deeply known, settling into places that feel like they were never fully mine to begin with. At first it is subtle, something I think I can carry. But you don’t stay small. You grow, quietly and steadily, until you are everywhere.

You make my body feel like it is no longer mine.

Everything becomes heavier. My limbs, my chest, my breath. Even the smallest movement feels like it asks too much of me. I lay still, not because I want to, but because I cannot fight the weight of you pressing down on me.

And then the emptiness comes.

It sits beneath the heaviness, stretching endlessly underneath it. I am filled with something that hurts, and at the same time, I feel completely empty. Too much and nothing all at once.

And it is unbearable.

Not in a way that breaks open, but in a way that stays. A pain that lives inside my body with nowhere to go.

You make stillness feel like something I am trapped inside.

From the outside, it looks like rest. Like quiet. Like nothing is wrong. But inside, it is suffocating. A stillness that holds me in place and tightens the longer I stay in it.

You stay.

Until everything feels further away. Until the world feels distant, like something I can see but cannot reach. Until even the idea of lifting myself out of you feels impossible.

And I sink.

Slowly, quietly, without realizing when it happens.

You hold me,

completely,

and you do not let go.

Why don’t you just let go,

why don’t you just let go.