[▶] for safekeeping.

ne(i)ther

i felt like

something was wrong recently

no, that's not right

i know something's been wrong recently

whether it's my detached, fragmented sense of self

or the inability to feel any care anymore.

the other day, i realised just how much

words mean to me

i wish i could perceive myself with an outside eye.

i-

i don't really know. sorry.

i just need to stop feeling bad for myself.

no. no, i'm fine. i'm okay.

it's just that (the weight of the world feels like it's crushing me)-

i have a lot to think about.

everyone who's dead wears the same expression

it's the same stillness of unnaturalism

the stifling, suffocating feeling of being kept in a box

a glorified box

that's all it is

goddamnit

it's me watching for the rise and fall of breath everytime i see them

but now it doesn't come

and because they put makeup on the dead

you don't even look like yourself. i hate it.

i hate having to see you there

i hate that this happens

i hate that i lost both of you in just under two years (even if maybe, i expected it

but god was it rough because you both lived

almost, if not a 100 years

it felt like you would live forever)

20 months on and i am a different person

but i am just as bitter and struggling with myself, even if in different ways

i haven't known what to do lately. in a way you gave me direction

but now i feel like everything's been uprooted and

like i have no sense of security or groundedness in this corner of the world

looking at the six of them, i thought

now these children are left without their parents

and they only have each other

all technically orphans, now

although we never think of people as orphans when they've grown to be adults and are no longer children

we just say, "oh your parents passed, it's natural"

but they become orphans then. don't they?

was it more fortunate that i knew you