Erosion
They mistook me for something endless.
And I let them.
They arrive carrying storms in their mouths, loneliness in their hands, sorrow dripping from them in slow unbearable waves. One by one, they are fed from the softest parts. A little tenderness here. A little energy there. Another piece carved carefully from the center and offered willingly.
Take this.
Take this too.
There is more.
There is always more.
Until there isn’t.
Until the shoreline begins collapsing inward in the dark.
There is a particular cruelty in being valued most for how well suffering is hidden. The world rewards quiet depletion. Rewards the ability to bleed without staining anything visible.
And so the unraveling remains beautiful from the outside.
A smile stretched thin as winter light.
Warm hands with frost already settling beneath the skin.
A voice still gentle despite the splintering underneath it.
No one notices the cracking because it happens silently.
Like waves wearing down stone.
Like roots pulling apart a foundation beneath the house.
Like water rising inch by inch inside walls no one thinks to check until everything has already begun to rot.
The emptiness arrives slowly.
First in small absences.
A delayed response to joy.
A heaviness where softness used to live.
A strange exhaustion blooming beneath the ribs no amount of sleep can touch.
Then deeper still.
Rooms within the self begin shutting their doors.
Gardens dry out unnoticed.
Something once living folds quietly inward from lack of nourishment.
Still, the giving continues.
Out of guilt.
Out of habit.
Out of the terrible fear that love must always be earned through self-sacrifice.
So more is offered.
More time.
More patience.
More understanding.
More pieces stripped carefully from the center until there is almost nothing left untouched beneath the hands of others.
And eventually, the body becomes a harvested field.
Picked clean.
Roots curling into barren earth searching desperately for something still alive enough to feed them.
Wilted stems bowing toward a sky that no longer answers.
There is nothing left to bloom.
There is nothing left to bloom.
There is nothing left to bloom.
