Traveler in a Suitcase!

I walked through the river

with no regrets to spare.

It welcomed me not as victim,

but as something it already knew.

Not to disappear,

but to see if silence

would feel like peace

this time.

I could drown here.

And I do.

But my lungs have learned the language

of quiet suffocation.

They say I pulled them in.

That my current

was too much.

Too persuasive.

Too me.

But no one saw the way

I kept sinking

just to make them float.

My body was temporary.

So was my kindness.

My mind cracked

in soft lines no one noticed.

It wasn’t a breakdown.

Just erosion.

They speak of betrayal

like it’s a future event.

But I’ve felt it

in every apology

that arrived too late.

And still,

they say I’m the influence.

The one who ruins.

The one who knows too much.

Fine.

Let them name me villain

if it helps them sleep.

I walked into the river.

Not with regret,

just resignation.

It’s easier to drown

when you stop pretending

you want to breathe.

Because the truth?

Once the water claims you,

you don’t rise.

You just stop needing air

the way others do.

- Ikkel Y. - 

You were sky,

the kind that holds water

without letting it fall.

You could’ve cried.

You didn’t.

You held the weight

like mercy disguised as silence.

You told lies

with good intentions.

And they cracked you open

in places no one saw.

Softness,

it seems,

is the most dangerous thing

to carry.

You were always light.

Even when you pulled the curtains closed

and let the dark tuck you in

like a secret.

You called it safety.

I called it surrender.

If only they knew,

darkness is not absence.

It’s light, turned inward.

And some hearts only survive

by glowing where no one looks.

Don’t be alone.

It wrecks me.

Even from here.

Even like this.

If your joy means

watching you from the edge of the frame,

then I’ll watch.

Quietly. Always.

Don’t look back.

I ruin what I reach for.

And I won’t let that happen to you

again.

Build the walls.

Close the gate.

Etch me out of the picture

if it means you can breathe again.

I’ll carry the version of us

that doesn’t hurt.

There was a teddy bear in the shop window.
Not rare. Not extravagant. Just there.
Warmed by the way others looked at it,
like proximity made it more lovable.

I stood outside and rehearsed logic. Like I always do.
Look, don’t touch.
Want, but don’t reach.

It made sense.
Until it didn’t.

Because when I came back,
the shelf had straightened itself.
You were gone in a way that didn’t even hurt.
Just… corrected.

And I...

I would have held you. Not because you were perfect.
But because wanting you
was the first thing I couldn’t solve.

I'm still learning to rewrite the formula:
“I don’t deserve” might mean
I was too afraid to choose you while you were still real.

Once broken, I tried to mend them.
Carried them into new rooms,
set them down where the light was kinder,
and dressed them in small ornaments.

as though beauty might hide the cracks.

But pieces remain pieces.
They never return to their first shape.
If you look too long, the seams betray themselves.

Still, they are something.
Not nothing.

I used to wish people were the same.
Whole again, once repaired.
But imperfections are louder than silence.

They dull the surface.
They drown the hidden perfections.

So I keep them away.

Hidden in corners, where ordinary eyes will not reach.
Kept for the rare passerby who does not mistake flaw for failure.

Who sees not the fracture,
but the pattern it creates.

Perhaps one day,
someone will arrive
and notice,

that perfection was never lost.
Only rearranged.

You gave me a world,

and I moved in.

You handed me rainbows,

as if color could promise forever.

Time flew.

The living obligation beside me

ground it down.

The rainbows don’t come anymore.

Your world dimmed.

I sat inside your presence like a locked room.

You built another world,

I understood it wasn’t mine.

Everything looked bright from far away.

Up close, my sky went dark.

There were doors, yes,

but none that opened for me.

I can’t move.

The light has turned to weight.

I keep imagining the ending,

and it keeps imagining me.

Time flew.

The living obligation beside me

ground it down.

The rainbows don’t come anymore.

Your world withered.

Nothing returned to me.

I think about standing,

but I can’t feel my legs.

You handed me a world,

and it began to hum.

An untitled song set up camp

behind my eyes.

It did not teach me to breathe,

it counted the seconds for me.

I rewound the tape, slowly,

thinking reason would appear in the hiss.

If I find the start, I told myself,

the middle will settle.

Fix it, will I?

Take it to a shop?

Replace the parts?

Or pass it on and call that wisdom?

I could record over it,

give the track a cleaner name,

sand the edges till it shines.

But do I want new,

or do I want quiet?

I don’t need it, I know.

So I ask you politely at first,

this song in my head,

won’t you stop singing?

It doesn’t.

It grows.

I offer bargains, ruins, the softest parts of me.

The volume learns my house.

And then the floor forgets my footsteps.

The hallway keeps its air.

Only the chorus moves,

and it is not mine.

You handed me a world.

It had windows that wouldn’t open,

light that behaved.

I learned the weather by observation,

not faith.

No guarantees. No clauses.

I struck the match.

I know that

The house brightened once,

then remembered it was ash.

Since then my mind keeps searching for you

the way a lighthouse wastes itself,

methodical, exact,

while you chase rainbows that promise

continuations, not returns.

You will not come back

unless I set a fire in your backyard,

and even then the heat would be

recognition, not mercy.

I wish you happiness.

You blew me off like dust from a book

you’d already decided not to read.

When joy fits you again,

you’ll see me, briefly,

in a red dress, correctly lit.

Not an apology. A proof.

My mind keeps its midnight.

Yours has been laundered, starched,

put away on the correct shelf.

If you looked back,

you’d learn how dark “home” can be

when the lights behave too well.

Maybe you were cursed.

Curses are simply contracts with fancy fonts.

They lapse. They always do.

The spell breaks, I suspect,

the moment I watch you suffer

and do not intervene.

Again: I wish you happiness.

Again: you brushed me off.

Again: when you are finally happy,

you’ll find me.

polite, exact,

in that red dress,

not waiting, only finished.

I remember the song you gave me.

Once it opened a door.

We stepped through, and the room knew our names.

Now it is only a song,

stripped of its key.