Unlit room, darkened mind, reports of despair
Charts the trend lines, regret in, regret out
My Shadow scrolled through my search history
Like it was scripture
I confused numb with neutral,
collapse with a clean solution,
And certainty seemed a hard truth
it didn’t argue back,
Every mirror lagged
A sacred moment
Just enough to feel accused
I said I was finished
And the word finished sounded profound
I said, I say.
I stay.
I paid, I played.
I pray.
The phrase appeared uninvited
Chiseled on the inner wall on the of my skull
Didn’t mean anything yet
Just noise, just static, cerebral typo
Then the world glitched
A laugh buffering in another room
Cold air punching my lungs awake
Reboot my bluescreened soul
Someone said my name
No urgency, and not poetically
Just my name
Just that voice and a word I hated
Memory came back uncurated
Hands around a cheap cup of coffee
Friends arguing about nothing
The mountain morning inhaling me first
The anima passed through
Wearing thrift-store sunlight
Humming a song I didn’t recognize
But somehow knew the tune
I knew the words
I sing, I sang.
I stay.
This time it sounded like a dare
Like something you say before you flinch
My mind ran syndicated fantasy
If I could live pre-caption
Before every feeling needed a thesis
Before joy learned to hide its family tree
If I could laugh without watching myself laugh
If I could touch the moment
Without turning it into evidence
But the past is archived
No redaction, Read-only
You can scroll, you can ache
You can’t re-enter
I kept negotiating with time
Like it was customer support
As if there was some save file
And I could choose which me to reboot
I saved. I saved.
I stay.
Now it sounded bitter
Like a verdict handed down
Like a sentence you serve
Smiles edged with collateral frowns
Just like mornings that don’t care
If I feel authentic yet
Want me to hold the Shadow of dawn
Without letting me hold see the sunrise
It wants repetition
Water, breath, showing up
The unsexy heroics
Of not disappearing
No choir, no absolution
Just the long hallway
Where the floor creaks
But doesn’t give way
The Self didn’t speak in lightning
Just leaned in and asked
What if this is the work
What if this is the myth
I stay.
Now it sounded smaller
But steadier
Like a hand on a doorframe
Testing whether the house is real
I stepped sideways out of the ritual
Not saved, not resolved
Still afraid of my own depth
Still wired wrong in familiar ways
But the breath kept happening
And the floor kept agreeing
And fear lost its monopoly
On the future tense
I stay.
Not as victory
Not as promise
But as participation
The Shadow walks behind me
Still tall, still persuasive
But quieter now
Like it knows I heard it—and chose another way
But the light isn’t kind
Just bare sufficient
Enough to see my own feet
Enough to take one more step
I stay.
And for today
That’s the spell
That holds.
