Why I Stay

 “Why I Stay”

I wake in a body that keeps on breathing
not out of desire,
but out of duty.

Not because I long for the morning,
but because someone, somewhere,
still smiles when I do.

I have built a life out of giving,
paved roads in silence,
sacrificed joy like spare change—
and called it love.
It is love.

But it’s also forgetting.
Forgetting how to ask myself
if I’m allowed to feel light.

I’d trade my happiness
for hers,
his,
theirs—
every time.
And I do.
And I will.
And still—
a piece of me aches quietly
each time I disappear.

But if I didn’t give it up,
I’d feel worse.
A conundrum carved into bone:
to feel wrong when I’m full,
to feel empty when I’m right.

There are days I wonder
what I’m still doing here.
Not out of drama—
but exhaustion.
The kind of tired that lives
behind the eyes.

I’ve imagined the end
more than I care to count.
Not with intent,
but with curiosity.
What if?
Would I rest?
Would it finally go quiet?

But I stay.
I always stay.
Because my mother’s heart
still beats for mine.
Because my brother still laughs
when I do.
Because she—
she still believes in me,
even when I don’t.

I live for them.
Not because I have to—
but because without them,
I wouldn’t know what else to live for.

And someday,
when the silence comes,
when the people I’d bleed for
fade into memory—

I don’t know what I’ll have left.

But maybe, just maybe,
there will be a part of me
that remembers how to matter.
Not for them.
Not for duty.
But for the quiet,
unspectacular miracle
of being here
at all.