Waking Isn’t Living

Old unfinished draft


I wake,
but I’m not alive—
lungs locked in a scream
I never got to finish.

His hands—
they’re not here,
but they are.
Ghost fingers press my throat
like they still own it.

My chest fights for breath,
but all I feel is
his weight,
his body stealing
what was never his to take.

I didn’t give.
I didn’t say yes.
I said no with my silence,
with my frozen limbs,
with my tear-soaked stillness.

Death might’ve been
a softer thing
than waking
to the scar
he carved across my face—
a signature
I never wanted to carry.

His touch is inked in my bones,
his memory a parasite
that claws at my soul
each night I close my eyes.

This is survival,
they say.
But it feels
a lot like
dying.