play, pause, replay

chasing the shadows

Violet eyes, cracked like stained glass,

stare up at a ceiling that doesn't care if I'm here or gone.

Roses between my thighs, wilted and torn

under the weight of every lie I swallowed,

every night I let someone else's hands

tell me I was worth something.

The thorns bury deep, draw blood,

leave marks that fade too slow;

Their petals falling one by one,

blood-red reminders of what's been lost,

what's rotted from the inside out.

Burning in a winter fire,

not enough to warm these bones,

just enough to burn.

The cold digs in, burrows under my skin,

and the fire turns to ice in my veins, 

freezing the scream lodged in my throat.

No one hears it—it's lost in the decayed melodies

we used to hum when the world was less cruel. Their

ghosts now haunt the hollow spaces where hearts beat.

There's poetry inside me,

but it's twisted up in the wreckage, wrapped 

in the chaos of whiskey and cigarette smoke.

Each word is a shard cutting through the silence,

its flesh turning into the grey of your eyes, burning

a hole through whatever's left of my heart.

It's a fucking war zone, and I'm just another casualty,

bleeding out in silence while the world keeps spinning.

Lovers sleep on green afternoons, 

while I'm wide awake, staring at these blue walls

that reek of regret and a bottle of bad decisions,

trapped in a room where the air is thick

with the scent of all the things I can't forget,

everything that I've tried to scrub clean but still lingers.

These walls are closing in, pressing against my chest,

and I wonder if this is what dying feels like—

a slow suffocation, a quiet slipping away,

until there's nothing left but the void.

I'm raw, my skin flayed open,

my soul laid bare for the world to see,

but there's no one here to witness it.

Every raw nerve screams in the dark,

bleeding into waves of sorrow, waiting for 

the next hit, the next round, the next fuck-up.

Because that's all that's left now—

a soul left to rot,

the hollow ache of a life lived 

too hard, too fast,

with nothing to show for it but a heart 

that still beats, even when it shouldn't.

* * *

A/N: You know what no one ever tells you? How the world can just flip a switch and act like you don't exist. Like, one day you're part of everything, and the next—boom—you're just cut off. And there's no manual for it, no guidebook on how to deal with the fact that you're drowning in this ocean of regret and grief. People throw those cookie-cutter self-help quotes at you like it's supposed to fix something. "Keep going," "Fight through it," "Stay positive." It's bullshit, honestly. Words that look good on a coffee mug but don't do jack when you're in the thick of it.

Because sometimes, you don't want to keep fighting. You're fucking exhausted. It's not as easy as "just push through." It's like trying to keep your head above water when you're already sinking. And every time you think you've caught a break, those shadows—they're right there, chasing you down. Like, you can't outrun it. And no amount of feel-good, motivational garbage is gonna make that go away.

The wound inside you, it's not healing—it's spreading. You can feel it, every day, eating away at whatever's left. And people don't get that. They think it's about strength or willpower, like you can just flip some switch and suddenly everything's okay. But nah, man, sometimes there's nothing you can do. The shadows are there, the pain's there, and you're stuck dealing with it on your own, whether the world cares or not.

But here's the real talk: even when it seems like you're up against it all, there's a flicker of something in you that keeps going. It's not about pretending everything's fine. It's about showing up, day after day, even when you're beat down. Sometimes just keeping that flicker alive, even if it's barely glowing, is all it takes to turn things around. You're tougher than you think, and when it feels like you've got nothing left, that's when you might just surprise yourself the most.

Keep breathing, keep pushing, and remember, it's not over until you say it is.

Affectionately,

Sreeja.