I have been asking softly,
like one speaks to a wound that hasn't scabbed—
can I go?
Not from the city, not the body.
From me.
Not vanish.
Not end.
Just:
be elsewhere.
There is a weight that doesn't sit on your shoulders
but is your shoulders.
There is a name that no one calls you by
but it's tattooed across every mistake.
Mine.
I trace my habits like topography.
Every rut, a memory.
Every reflex, a ruin.
Even silence, when I try to sit in it,
comes preloaded with echoes of myself.
I am not in pain.
I am the architecture of it.
A scaffolding of shame
painted to look like personality.
I have tried to be kind to this skin.
Tried to prune the overgrowth.
But every leaf I pluck
whispers like a secret I've told myself too many times—
"You made this."
Tell me—
is it possible to evict the tenant that is your own breath?
To step outside yourself
without blood or miracle?
I've gone on retreats where the trees don't know me.
I've sat on mountains
and pretended I wasn't thinking about
how I am still the same
just with better scenery.
I've fasted from mirrors.
I've silenced my own name
like it was a profanity.
But still,
I wake up wearing me again.
I want to unzip my soul
like a wetsuit filled with cement.
Drop it on some foreign floor
and walk away barefoot,
lighter than rebirth.
I want to be a shadow without a source.
A thought that no longer recurs.
A former version that didn't survive the edit.
Can I outgrow myself
like a snake splits its old life open
against a rock
and doesn't look back?
Can I burn this house down
and walk the ruins
without knowing which ash was once my mouth?
Because I am tired of living in a body
where every heartbeat feels
like an accusation.
Tired of a mind
that loops the same broken film
and dares to call it memory.
Tired of a soul
that prays with one hand
and strangles with the other.
They say healing comes
when you accept yourself.
But what if you are the infection?
What if every attempt at peace
is sabotage dressed in your handwriting?
I have never known
if I want to be found
or forgotten.
But today—
if the divine is listening
and has room for contradictions—
I am begging
to be released
from the shape I've taken.
Because I love the sky.
I love the idea of tomorrow.
I just can't stand the voice
that always follows me into it.
Let me shed.
Let me slip.
Let me go
without ceremony.
Let me leave
the room
where I am
the walls.
