The Painless Void

I locked my pain inside a box.

No shape.

No color.

No name.

I buried it beneath silence

and told myself

that anything without a name

could never find me.

I was wrong.

It learned my voice.

Learned my fears.

Learned how to sit beside me

without asking to be invited.

At first,

I hated it.

Then I grew accustomed

to its weight.

And somehow,

the thing I once begged to escape

became the only thing

that never left.

Pain became familiar.

Familiar became comforting.

And comfort became a cage

I willingly stepped inside.

I held its hand

like an old friend,

smiling as I wondered

when I stopped knowing

which one of us

was holding the other.

Then came you.

I wrote your name

across my skin in lipstick,

as though a word

could become a claim.

I carved you

into every promise

I was too afraid to break.

I sealed my devotion

with blood

and called it love.

Because obsession

was an uglier word.

The boy is mine.

I whispered it.

The boy is mine.

I believed it.

The boy is mine.

Until the words

stopped sounding like love

and started sounding like a warning.

I kissed you

as though devotion

could erase possession.

As though loving you enough

would make you unable

to leave me.

I’m obsessed.

I’m obsessed.

No one can have you.

Not even you.

And somewhere between

wanting to be loved

and needing to be needed,

I disappeared.

When did I stop being me?

I remember having a name.

I remember having a face.

I remember looking into mirrors

and recognizing

the person looking back.

Now the reflection

feels like a stranger

wearing my skin.

The shapes blur.

The names disappear.

Pieces of me

keep falling away,

quietly,

like ash from something

that has already burned.

I reach for them,

but my hands don’t remember

what they’re supposed to hold.

I search for the girl

I used to be,

but every path

leads back to the same place.

The box.

The blood.

The obsession.

The empty space

where I used to live.

Maybe the pain was never

the thing inside the box.

Maybe the box was me.

Maybe I locked myself away

so long ago

that I forgot

there was ever a door.

And now I sit inside

the painless void,

holding hands

with everything that broke me,

wondering—

if I let go,

will I finally be free?

Or will there be

nothing left of me

to save?