The Quiet After Drowning

There was a time I knew where the light slept.

I could find it, even with my eyes closed —

a soft hum beneath the bones,

a reason for the pulse.

But something swallowed the dawn.

Now every morning tastes like forgetting.

I wake,

but not entirely.

The air feels borrowed,

the days — rehearsed.

I move through them like a shadow

trying to remember the shape it came from.

Sometimes I think of endings,

how gentle they might be —

like water closing over sound.

How quiet.

How kind.

But then the dream returns,

thin and trembling,

refusing to die where I buried it.

It sits beside me,

its heartbeat faint but certain,

and I keep breathing —

if only to hear it again.

I am not alive.

I am a rehearsal for it.

A ghost still chasing the warmth

of what it once meant to want.

And if I keep walking,

it’s not toward the light —

it’s just away from the dark

that knows my name too well.

Feezahola