Still Here

I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to say at the end of all this.
There’s no neat bow to tie around it.
No clean, redemptive arc to make sense of the wreckage.

I’m not healed.
I’m not stronger.
I’m not some gleaming, reborn phoenix clawing its way out of the ashes.

I'm just here.
Still here.
Dragging every goddamn broken piece with me.
Walking streets that don't feel real anymore.
Breathing air that tastes like dust.

Some days it feels like I died right alongside them
with my dad, with my foster mum, with the futures I built that crumbled under my feet.
Like whatever version of me was supposed to survive all that
the better version, the stronger one,
got buried under the rubble and never fucking got back up.

And what’s left is this.
this ghost stitched together with stubbornness and spite.
This hollowed-out thing that keeps putting one foot in front of the other,
not because it wants to,
but because gravity keeps pulling and inertia keeps winning.

I think about the moments I should’ve done differently.
I think about the last things I said.
The last looks I gave.
The last fucking moments I didn’t know were "lasts" at all until they slammed shut behind me.

And it rots inside.
It festers.
It chews on the bones I’m trying to stand on.

There are days the anger runs hotter than the grief.
Days I want to punch the sky for being so goddamn empty.
For being so silent.

There are days the sadness is a weight so heavy I can barely lift my head.
Days when it feels like even my blood moves slower.

And there are days,
honestly, most days
when it’s just grey.
Not sharp.
Not loud.
Just endless, dragging grey.

But even when everything in me screams to just fucking quit,
to lie down and let it all slip away,

I'm still here.

Maybe out of rage.
Maybe out of some cracked instinct that refuses to let the world win.
Maybe because somewhere, deep down where even the ghosts can't reach,
there's still one tiny, stubborn spark refusing to go dark.

I'm still here.

Still breathing.
Still walking.
Still carrying the graves and the wreckage and the guilt.
Still writing words down like leaving claw marks across the walls.

Still remembering the faces.
Still arguing with the memories.
Still trying to forgive myself for surviving when they didn’t.

Still standing, even when it feels like standing is the last fucking thing I’m capable of.

Maybe that’s not strength.
Maybe it’s not resilience or courage or whatever the hell people like to package survival as.
Maybe it’s just existence.
Raw.
Unheroic.
Unpretty.

But it’s real.
It’s mine.

And for now,
it's enough.

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