What Stays

I wake up

First mistake of the day.

The dark is too thick to be morning,

too thin to be sleep.

I sit up—

or maybe the bed falls away.

There’s something beside me.

Not breathing. Not quiet. Just there.

It peels off the wall in my head.

That name.

The one I’d sealed shut.

Months ago.

I don’t turn the light on.

It doesn’t belong here.

I don’t cry.

But the silence sounds

like it remembers something.

I stay.

It stays.

The dark stays.

I don’t move.

I don’t look.

I don’t reach—

not anymore.

But the darkness is still there.

Its hand reaches out.

It can have me.