Still Here

They ask me why I keep bleeding
for things that never once
learned how to love me back.
Like survival was some clean, Sunday thing.

Like every breath I take
ain’t bought with pieces of myself
I swore I’d never give away.
I ain’t broken by accident.

I was built this way
a leaning church of cracks and shadows,
held up by obsession,
by the habits that won’t let go,
and the hard-headed refusal
to just disappear.

Every year they throw another me
into the fire.
Every year I call it growing.
Every year I watch the smoke climb
and wonder which part of me
went out screaming.

There’s something under my skin.
Not a devil.
Not no monster.
Just the plain truth
clawing,
scratching,
begging to be looked at.

Some nights,
when the whole world finally shuts its mouth,
I can feel it peeling me open
from the inside.

The dark don’t hunt me no more.
It knows my name.
Knows my ways.
Pulls up a chair
like an old friend
and asks how much more I’m willing to lose
before I quit calling this living.

I never got an answer.
Just scars.
Just proof.
Just a pile of things I gave up
for empty medicine
and a little quiet that never lasts.

I spent so long hunting
something to fill the hole
I forgot to ask
if the hole was ever meant
to be filled.

So I keep sinking.
Keep reaching.
Keep handing over pieces of myself
to things that swear they’ll save me
and leave me with nothing but silence.

Tell me the secret, sugar.
Tell me how everybody else
carries their own reflection
without buckling under it.
Tell me how to stop treating my heart
like something up for trade.
Tell me why I keep standing
at the edge of myself,
one foot hanging over the black,
wondering what would happen
if I just let go.

Maybe this is the cost.
Maybe every dream comes with teeth.
Maybe love is just figuring out
which wounds you’ll keep carrying.

Or maybe I’ve been laying myself down
on that altar so long
I forgot what’s left to offer.

All I know is this:
Tomorrow’s coming.
And I’ll drag this broken house of a body
through another sunrise
not because I’m fixed,
not because I’m hopeful,
but because somewhere under the wreckage,
under the hunger,
under the long war between
who I am
and who I meant to be,
something still won’t die.

And that stubborn little thing
is both my curse
and the only reason
I’m still here.