Where Words End

Words fall easy
from warm mouths
over coffee cups,
in glowing screens,
in promises wrapped soft
like blankets for winter.

“I’m here.”
“We must.”
“Soon.”
“Always.”

They scatter them
like petals.
Beautiful, weightless,
already dying
before they touch the ground.

And you,
fool-hearted,
gathered each one
as though language
could build shelter.

But storms
have a brutal honesty.

When the night split open,
when your hands were raw
from holding together
what was never shared weight,
you learned
who truly carried
and who merely spoke
of carrying.

Most were echoes.
Most were theatre.
Most loved the sound
of their compassion
more than the burden of it.

So here you stand,
not rescued,
not chosen,
not kept.

Just you,
and the sharp silence
where expectation
used to live.

It is a lonely thing,
to see clearly.

To know
that many will dress absence
as intention,
that devotion is often vocabulary,
not labour.

And yet, there is something fierce
in this solitude.

Because when the illusions rot,
when every borrowed promise
turns to smoke,
you meet
the one soul
who remained.

Your own.

Bruised, perhaps.
Weary, certainly.
But real.

And in a world
of borrowed speeches
and vanishing hands,

there is power
in becoming
your own proof.