Writing down my fear in permanence

I’ve never feared dying, not really.
There were nights when I welcomed it with open arms,
like an old friend arriving late to a party I never wanted to attend.

It was a invitation to escape, to become anything but this,
and I remember how I used to beg the silence to take me,
offering up my breath like a sacrifice to the void,
but no matter how still I lay, no one ever came to collect.

I still do not fear dying.
It’s a process I’ve memorized, a slow unraveling of myself,
a quiet breaking beneath the surface of skin and bone,
the soft ache that settles deep into the marrow,
pressing against my ribs like a steady hand on a closing door.

I have been dying in pieces for years,
small parts of me crumbling until I barely noticed the shape I was becoming,
until the idea of dying felt less like an ending
and more like something I had been rehearsing all along.

But death, death is something else entirely.

I’ve tried to understand it before.
Lying still in the dark, pressing silence against my ears,
pretending I was already gone, already nothing.
But nothing is not peaceful.

Nothing is the feeling of drowning in air,
of being stretched thin across an absence that keeps widening.
It is trying to hold on to the final flicker of light,
where you reach for it and touch only the outline of its absence.

Is that what death is?
A door locking softly behind you,
a voice you almost recognize whispering, “That’s enough now?”

I don’t fear dying.
Pain, I can handle. Pain is just another visitor.
I’ve sat across from it too many times to count.
A knife dragging softly across my skin,
illness that hollowed me out from the inside,
a slow decay that smiled like it knew me by name.

It all ends the same way, doesn’t it?

The moment my heart stops,
The moment I forget who I was,
I am erased.

I don't fear dying.
I fear death.

When I was nine,
my father slammed his fist against the kitchen table
because I didn’t know what sev3n times 3ight was.
The only thing I could multiply was the way f3ar spread in my chest,
expon3ntial, like the way his voice rose when I gave the wrong answer.

“M47h 15 345y” he’d barked, “y0u ju57 d0n’7 7ry h4rd 3n0u9h.”
But no one asks a drowning child why they didn’t swim faster.
He stood there, an 3quation 1 could never solve,
his anger was always x, and 1 was always less than.
The page in front of me blurred, numb3rs curling l1ke claws.

He’d l3an 0ver my shoulder, “2x + 3 = wh4t?”
his breath hot, like the countdown before a bomb.
1 whispered an answer; wr0ng, aga1n.
I felt my stomach tw1st,
into a fract10n t00 sm4ll to b3 hum4n.
1 learned that tears make poor 3ras3rs.

By age ten, 1 associated numbers with v10l3nc3.
Not fists no, he never ra1sed a hand,
just a tone sharp 3n0ugh to subtract my worth.
"If y = your In7311ig3nc3 4nd x = 3ff0r7, you cl34r1y 4r3n’7 7rying."
Funny how formulas forget fear.

I stared at equations like 0ld scars,
each one a tr1gg3r that s3t fir3 t0 my lungs.
S0lv3 f0r x: You are stup1d. Pr0v3 y0ur valu3 1n f1v3 st3ps.
My fing3rs tr3mbl3d on the c4lcul4t0r,
each b33p a r3m1nd3r 10n of h0w much 1 didn’t kn0w.

I w0uld sw34t so b4dly I st41n3d the p4p3r,
panic w3lling 1n my thr04t like d3c1m4l p01nts
sp1ll1ng 0v3r 1nt0 a syst3m that c0uld n3v3r c0nt41n th3m.
x = sh4m3, y = f41lur3, and m3?
I was th3 n3g4t1v3 sp4c3 4r0und th3m.

If 1 = m1st4k3
and 3ach m1st4k3 1s mult1pl13d by s1l3nc3,
h0w m4ny t1m3s must I f41l
b3f0r3 s0m30n3 t34ch3s m3 g3ntly?

I st1ll c4n't d0 m4th w1th0ut p4n1ck1n9.
St1ll c4n't l00k 4t numb3rs w1th0ut s33ing r3d.
St1ll h0ld my br34th wh3n s0m30n3 4sks m3 t0 "c4lcul4t3,"
4s 1f tr4um4 1s just 4n0th3r v4r14bl3 t0 c4nc3l 0ut.

1 c4rry m4th l1k3 4 w0und st1tch3d w1th pr0tr4ct0rs.
1 c4rry 1t l1k3 4 ch1ldh00d 1 c4n't subtr4ct fr0m.
S0 n0, 1 d0n’t "just n33d t0 study m0r3."
1 n33d t0 r3wr1t3 th3 3qu4t10n.
0n3 wh3r3
x = p41n, y = h34l1ng, and z = th3 r1ght t0 b3 br0k3n 4nd st1ll w0rthy.

B3c4us3 n0t 4ll 0f us w3r3 t4ught numb3rs w1th p4t13nc3.
S0m3 0f us l34rn3d t0 c0unt by t4lly1ng pUn1shm3nts.
S0m3 0f us w3r3 t0ld t0 "gr0w up,"
b3f0r3 w3’d 3v3n l34rn3d t0 4dd fr4ct10ns.

4nd 3v3n n0w,
wh3n 1 s33 4 pr0bl3m, my h4nds sw34t,
my puls3 d1v1d3s,
4nd 1 b3c0m3 th3 uns0lv4bl3 th1ng
4t th3 c3nt3r 0f th3 p4g3.

Translation:

Spoiler

When I was nine,
my father slammed his fist against the kitchen table
because I didn’t know what seven times eight was.
The only thing I could multiply was the way fear spread in my chest,
exponential, like the way his voice rose when I gave the wrong answer.

“Math is easy,” he’d barked, “you just don’t try hard enough.”
But no one asks a drowning child why they didn’t swim faster.
He stood there, an equation I could never solve,
his anger was always x, and I was always less than.
The page in front of me blurred, numbers curling like claws.

He’d lean over my shoulder, “2x + 3 = what?”
his breath hot, like the countdown before a bomb.
I whispered an answer; wrong, again.
I felt my stomach twist,
into a fraction too small to be human.
I learned that tears make poor erasers.

By age ten, I associated numbers with violence.
Not fists no, he never raised a hand,
just a tone sharp enough to subtract my worth.
“If y = your intelligence and x = effort, you clearly aren’t trying.”
Funny how formulas forget fear.

I stared at equations like old scars,
each one a trigger that set fire to my lungs.
Solve for x: You are stupid. Prove your value in five steps.
My fingers trembled on the calculator,
each beep a reminder of how much I didn’t know.

I would sweat so badly I stained the paper,
panic welling in my throat like decimal points
spilling over into a system that could never contain them.
x = shame, y = failure, and me?
I was the negative space around them.

If 1 = a mistake
and each mistake is multiplied by silence,
how many times must I fail
before someone teaches me gently?

I still can’t do math without panicking.
Still can’t look at numbers without seeing violence blooming.
Still hold my breath when someone asks me to “calculate,”
as if trauma is just another variable to cancel out.

I carry math like a wound stitched with protractors.
I carry it like a childhood I can’t subtract from.
So no, I don’t “just need to study more.”
I need to rewrite the equation.
One where
x = pain, y = healing, and z = the right to be broken and still worthy.

Because not all of us were taught numbers with patience.
Some of us learned to count by tallying punishments.
Some of us were told to “grow up,”
before we’d even learned to add fractions.

And even now,
when I see a problem, my hands sweat,
my pulse divides,
and I become the unsolvable thing at the center of the page.

I did not ask to become a bouquet.
I did not ask for my ribs to split open like soil softening for spring.
Love is not supposed to be botanical,
but here I am, choking on dicentra,
their meaning curling like smoke in my lungs.

You looked at me like I was a field to admire, not a flower to tend.
Your eyes passed over me like wind, never stopping long enough to know my heart.
I tried learned the language of flowers so i could spell your name in petals,
offered you a handful of camellias, my longing blooming from silence,
you gave me back forget-me-nots, but you forgot me anyway.

This disease is not romantic.
There is nothing lovely about vomiting purple hyacinth into the sink at 3 am,
nothing beautiful about azaleas clawing their way up my throat,
your message written on their leaflets: take care of yourself for me.

There is marigold in my pillowcase, crinkled and golden,
even in sleep, I bleed pollen from words I never dared to write,
afraid you might read them and laugh at the softness of my confession.
My breath is filled with heartache, the air turning heavy like grief in spring.

The doctors said hanahaki like it was poetic,
like it didn’t mean dying slowly beneath blooms I never wanted.
Unrequited love sounds sweeter than it is,
it’s really just a sickness, and I’m tired of coughing out beauty.

I wear melancholy like morning dew,
wet-laced fingertips trying not to pluck out the garden growing behind my tongue.
The more I try to forget you, the more you bloom.

The rain is kind at least.
It doesn't ask for anything in return.
I open my window, let the droplets seep into my skin,
let it wash the pollen off my sheets,
let it pretend it can make me clean again.

I wish you’d just tell me to stop loving you.
I think that would be kinder than watching me rot gently,
from the inside out, one petal at a time.

I chose his room like someone might choose a name that isn’t theirs,
thinking maybe the dirt of his footsteps would shape mine into something better,
as if sleep could be sanctified by proximity to his dreams,
as if a space he had outgrown could stretch to fit the version of me I was scared to become.

I thought maybe breathing in the air he used to exhale would let me stand taller,
less like a question mark bent under the weight of trying,
more like an exclamation, loud and worth noticing.
But the silence in that room didn’t cheer me on,
it pressed against me like wallpaper I couldn’t peel off,
softly whispering, you’ll never be him, no matter how long you sleep in his ghost.

My window opened to a flat roof I climbed like a ladder to the stars,
barefoot and quiet, with the sky leaning down to kiss my cheek.
Those quiet hours when the house was empty,
and the world below didn’t know where I was,
I could almost forget the things I wasn’t.
Up there, I wasn’t a ghost of my brother,
I wasn’t a disappointment packaged in female anatomy.

My room was the one me and my siblings ran to when the yelling started downstairs.
We huddled near the vent, wide-eyed and greedy for details,
as if understanding the war would shield us from it.
Nosy, yes, but also desperate to understand,
how love could be weaponized so violently,
in the mouth of the people who gave us our names.

Sometimes I think we became meteorologists of our own childhood trauma,
predicting fury by the volume of slammed doors,
trying to decode if today would be broken dishes or just broken hearts.

My closet was the only place that felt mine,
I never owned many clothes, so there was space for dreams.
I draped blankets from hangers like royal banners,
pretended the darkness was velvet, not fear,
and buried myself beneath layers of imaginary safety,
just me and my belief that if I hid long enough,
the world might forget to come find me.

I never liked being in that room.
The floors told on me with every step,
as if the house didn’t want me there either.
The door to the eves rattled with every gust,
like something was trapped behind it, something forgotten or feral.

and the vents… God, the vents.
Sometimes they sounded more like confessionals than warm air.
I could hear every syllable of disappointment that passed between my parents
as if it were addressed to me personally.
And maybe it was.

But I never left that room.
Maybe because I was always scared of the first floor.
It wasn’t even because of how dark it got at night,
But because being downstairs was like walking barefoot on broken glass,
My parents voices sharp with hatred,
Where love came with a price tag, and silence meant someone was losing.

Crawling up the stairs back to the attic,
Tracing my footsteps to avoid the tattle-telling creaks.

I never liked my room.
But I learned to live in it.
I could pretend I was safe.

Pretend that inherited spaces could soften,
Pretend that fear wasn’t the thing that made me call it home.

He peels himself like citrus,
bitter rinds, pulp bleeding lies on every hand that reaches.
The nation spoon-fed tang from a juicer built of red hats and hatred.

"Orange juice goes great with ICE." They say,
but only if you’re not the ones being crushed into cubes,
rounded up like seeds that don’t belong in the glass.

He drew borders around birthrights,
like a toddler with a crayon and no sense of consequence.
Built walls out of paranoia and promised security,
but his bricks were crafted with xenophobia.

Native children born on tribal lands, ghosts in their own nation,
their lineage boiled down to a percentage,
like purity could be measured in drops of sweat stolen from their grandmothers' brows.

They say blood is thicker than water,
but only if that blood is bleached enough to blend in.
as if blood isn’t the same red under every flag.
As if pain doesn’t scream in the same tongue,
when ripped from home.

Raids came like clockwork, they came into schools.
Classrooms suddenly became crime scenes,
students yanked mid-algebra,
for the “crime” of existing between the wrong borders.

Children recited the Pledge of Allegiance,
as a ritual for protection,
while ICE vans parked beside buses.
And no one got a hall pass out of this.
Steel fences replaced recess,
the alphabet became a list of things not to say:

A is for alien.
B is for border.
C is for chain-link hands.

Schoolyards are now surveillance zones,
playgrounds being patrolled like warzones,
and names they can’t pronounce called from rosters like execution orders.

He said schools were failing then pulled the life support.
Slashed it like a throat, and let the system bleed out slow,
starving public schools until knowledge
became a luxury not even offered on clearance.

Teachers brought supplies from home,
while he bought more golf clubs.
kids ate shame for breakfast,
while he cut cords to after-school programs,
like feeding knowledge was a form of socialism.

Orange is the color of warning signs,
but he painted it across every law that said women were more than vessels.
He never learned the difference between consent and conquest,
only how to wrap both in campaign speeches
and throw them to crowds like rotten fruit,
too stunned to smell the mold.

Orange like the pills now locked behind counters, or never stocked at all.
Orange like the rust of protest signs left in the rain,
after another bill passed in a room full of men,
who never had to bleed for their mistakes.

She was seventeen, and late.
Not to class, but to her own body’s timeline.
Because some boy with beer breath and a football scholarship,
decided his name deserved more protection than hers,
and when she begged the clinic for a reset
for mercy, for time, the door was bolted.

The hallway lined with judges in red ties,
telling her that God had a plan,
and she should be grateful she survived the gift.

Orange juice curdles in heat.
And America boiled.

He calls himself pro-life,
with hands that have grabbed more than power,
a mouth that reduces women to backstage props in the theater of his ego,
as if forcing motherhood on trauma wasn’t just another kind of assault.

He said he cared for the unborn,
but only until the cord is cut,
only until the baby is shaded brown,
or is born with female autonomy,
or lives in a neighborhood redlined by the ghosts of his policies.
Then suddenly life becomes optional.

Orange is supposed to be a fruit,
not the color of god-complex legislation.
Not the color that stains every map where choice has been revoked,
not the hue of shame they make her wear,
as she crosses state lines looking for freedom,
like a fugitive for wanting to be a child, and not a mother.

And still, somewhere in America,
a girl peels an orange and thinks about her options,
none of which include safety, or justice, or even being believed.

And while women wept into unwashed sheets and empty cradles,
he handed out rings made of rust, and said marriage was sacred,
but only if it came gift-wrapped in straight lines,
and looked like the cover of a 1950s magazine.

He smeared queerness like pulp on a windshield,
called it unnatural as he kissed the boots of televangelists
who never knew God past the pages they cherry-picked.
He let the states decide
which is to say he turned away while they lit matches,
under every marriage license that didn’t spell man + woman.

He didn't need to scream slurs to make hatred law,
he just stayed silent in rooms full of cowards and called it democracy.
Let the red states boil their rainbow flags,
until the only color left was red, white, and blue.

He couldn’t spell empathy if you gave him the vowels in order,
but he could spell “traditional,”
just well enough to fold it into a bill
that burned the word “husband” out of a husband’s mouth.

He made America great again
for those who already had power.
For those who never had to explain,
why their love looked different
but bled exactly the same.

In his America, love has rules.
You can only love if it fits into a box,
tied up in stars and stripes, with a neat orange bow,
so the bitterness is easier to swallow.

So let it end the way it began,
picked too early and sold by men who mistake power for purpose.
And maybe someday, someone will ask:

“why do you fear the color orange?”

And I’ll say,
because I’ve seen what it does when it thinks it’s ripe enough to rule.

I thought ghosts were supposed to be estranged souls hiding from death,
but it’s only ever been her, weeping in the corners of every room I left behind,
dragging her broken fingers through the seams of my ribs, begging for a way back in,
chewing pieces of my voice, stealing the words I was saving for tomorrow.

She will not die, she will not let me go.

She wraps her sticky fingers around the chords of my voice and pulls until it frays,
sobbing that I have abandoned her somewhere between a willow tree and the a pier,
demanding I wear her grief like a second skin,
heavy and soaked through with all the things I swore I'd forget.

I watch her some nights, her body trembling,
her arms wrapped around what’s left of her soul,
even though I know she’s only a memory dressed in my penance,
I still flinch when she wails, her tears brewing in my eyes.

She clings to me with the desperation of a dying thing,
howling into my chest that I was supposed to stay, to never change, to be her.
Every time I walk forward she peels a little more soul from my spine,
as if I owe her something for surviving this long.

I want to tell her it’s too late, I want to tell her I’m not hers anymore,
but I can’t. I only look at her and I only feel the aching,
the horrible, tender ache of knowing she was never taught to let go.

Spoiler

(I hate this, it's horrible- I can't get my brain to work with me today at all... I'm tweaking out.)

They say the universe is infinite stretches 93 billion light-years across,
but it is also a graveyard.
The stars we wish on are dead,
hand-stitch like the lines on the palm of your hand.

I would have wrapped the Orion belt around your waist,
woven the Milky Way into a rope,
and tethered it between your heart and mine,
Still, it would never be enough.

Scientists say black holes tear the fabric of reality,
so heavy they pull galaxies into their mouths,
a well so deep light itself forgets how to climb out.
Maybe that’s what we are,
a planet collapsed into itself, pulled apart by the wrong timeline.

"This isn't the right universe," you said.
Maybe we were built from different atoms of stars that never met.
Maybe the blueprint of us was flawed from the beginning,
scratched in the blank of a galaxy too young to know better.

But what universe would ever be right for us?
Where could we hide from gravity,
when everything in space falls apart eventually?

I could offer you Saturn’s rings,
shards of shattered moons,
glittering debris circling in endless devotion.

I have tried giving you galaxies,
painting constellations over your scars,
and still, you would look past me,
toward a galaxy I cannot reach.

Even if I folded the Milky Way into the curl of your hair,
even if I named every dead star after the twinkle in your eyes,
you would still say, “There are no right universes for us.”

And tell me, love,
if not here, then where?

What cosmic dice roll could land us someplace
where I could be enough?
Where my hands wouldn’t tremble holding galaxies for you,
where the endless dark wouldn’t swallow all the words I never got to say?

if I found another universe, a better one,
where there are no black holes to pull us apart,
no supernova screaming themselves to pieces,

Would you love me there?

Or would you still leave me away,
slow as a the moon drifting from the earth,
until even gravity gives up trying to hold you close?

There’s no air between who I am and who I perform,
the walls inch closer with every second I waste being ordinary,
every breath is a measure of how far I’m falling behind,
how close I am to disappearing between the cracks of louder people.

There’s a version of me that fits in every room but none of them are me.
I stretch to match their edges, nodding at cues I’ve memorized,
It’s not lying, it’s acting. It's a strategy. It’s exhausting.

Everyone says you have to be something,
like a shape poured into a mold that’s cooling too fast,
and if you don’t set right, if you warp even a little,
they snap you in half and start over without blinking.

I am told to shine, But not too much.
Never shine brighter than anyone else’s light,
don’t trip over your own ambition,
only ask questions if you already know the answers.

Some days my body feels like a glass container,
the world pours expectations into it until I’m nearly overflowing,
and I have to stand there center stage,
praying the cracks don’t show, hoping nobody looks too close.

I don’t know what shape they want me to be anymore,
but I keep folding, smoothing, tucking away the edges,
praying that whatever is left looks enough like a person
that they don’t throw it out with the other mistakes.

TW: mentions of death, and su!c!de.

I don’t know how to grieve something that hasn’t happened yet,
but I do it anyway, like a rehearsal for a play I never want to open.
At night, I lie awake imagining a world where your voice has gone quiet,
where your laughter isn’t echoing off the walls I’ve built around you.
It terrifies me more than death ever has when pointed at myself.

I don’t know when we started joking about it.
You texted me first, “if you ever decided to disappear, we’ll go together.”
holding hands like we did when we were ten,
like matching tombstones side by side
in the dirt we used to dig for earthworms.

the kind of jokes we say with a smile
but never quite meet each other's eyes.
“If one of us ever does it, we tell the other first.”
Like a pact carved in our blood,
only legible when the room is too quiet and the night too loud.

We laugh. We always laugh.
But I cry myself to sleep when you’re not there to hear me.
Because the truth is: I couldn’t do it without you,
not just death, but life.

You are not just my best friend,
you are the thread that stitched this skin back on
after every moment I nearly came undone.
You are the safe place I never had to ask for,
the “you can talk to me” that actually meant it,
the silence that didn’t need to be filled
because you were in it with me.

But when I imagine your voice vanishing,
when I let the idea settle,
that the world could go on spinning
without you to hold it still for me,
I spiral.

I cry until my pillow feels like a body,
and still it isn’t yours.
I scroll through photos,
like they’re proof you still exist,
in some timeline I haven’t fallen out of.

You’ve been here longer than the idea of death ever made sense to me.
You were the first person to make the world feel less like a cage,
and more like a story I actually wanted to keep reading.

When people talk about soulmates, they always mean romance,
but I don’t think they’ve never met someone whose laugh
could stop a storm in their chest the way yours does.
I think they’ve never had someone who knew the exact sound
their silence made, and still stayed.

People tell me it’s unhealthy to love someone that much.
To make someone your sun, your moon, the oxygen in your chest.
But they’ve never had someone like you,
who saves my life without even realizing they’re doing it.

Sometimes, I stare at the ceiling and think:
What if the call comes while I’m brushing my teeth?
What if I wake up and it’s already too late?
What if your last message was just a meme,
and I’ll have to spend the rest of my life staring at it like it’s your tombstone?

I am terrified of the day the phone rings and it isn’t your voice,
or worse, it is, but it sounds like goodbye,
like you’re trying not to break me while already breaking.

We joke about it. We make it a punchline because grief
is easier to carry when it’s wearing clown shoes,
but I’ve sobbed into the bones of my pillow
wondering how I’m supposed to keep breathing if you don’t.

I can’t do this without you, that’s not melodrama,
That’s just the truth dressed in all the honesty I can muster.
I know we promised we’d tell each other first.
But please, please If the time ever comes, tell me.
Look me in the eyes and say it straight.

I will come and find you, and that is a threat.
I’ll drag you into the light by the sleeve of your hoodie,
and remind you that we’re a team,
and that you don’t have to go anywhere alone.

So if you ever think about leaving,
just remember what we always say:
"Not without me."

Each time I etched their names into the paper,
I thought I was casting them out,
thought ink could be an exorcism,
thought poetry could be a purge.

But they grew stronger in telling,
fed on my metaphor and similes like marrow.
They built altars out of the poems I wrote
and began to worship themselves
in the sound of my voice cracking.

I am no braver than I was on day one.
I’ve just learned how to perform the bleeding
so it looks like art instead of unraveling.

I thought if I could name them all,
give them exit wounds instead of exit plans,
I could finally say, I am not afraid anymore.
But fear has a mother tongue I still dream in,
and some nights, I wake up choking on consonants I buried in childhood.

Because what if this doesn’t end with me growing stronger?
What if I’ve only learned to articulate the shape of my cage
without ever finding the keys?

I fear that fear has made a home in me, and like a parasite,
it’s learned to mimic my thoughts so perfectly I can’t tell which ones are mine.
I fear that if I stop fearing, I won’t know who I am.
That even this poem, the last of thirty,
is not a finish line, but another loop in my routine.

There are entire weeks I spend underwater,
walking through the world like the air is filled with smoke,
like someone turned down the volume
and I'm shouting through glass.

I tell people I’m tired,
because it’s easier than saying
I carry a war inside me with no clear enemy,
just the endless push and pull within my own skin.

And when they ask what I’m afraid of,
I never know how to answer.
How do I explain a fear that wears my face,
sleeps in my bed,
knows my mother’s voice,
and my worst memories by name?

Because what if healing isn’t a rising arc?
What if I’m just getting better
at hiding the limp?

I thought if I wrote my fear in permanence,
they would leave me.
Instead, they learned to read.