Some people walk into sadness
the way dusk enters a room —
without asking permission.
They let it pass through them
like weather through open windows.
I do not know how.

I run until my lungs run empty,
until my body forgets its name,
and it finds me —
beneath the practiced smile,
behind the masks I call kindness,
in the rooms I lock behind me —
even when all I want is to stop wanting.

Sorrow was the first thing
I learned to carry without dropping.
Still, I know the shape of it
better than I know my own skin.

I hold my sadness
like a coat I have worn too long —
frayed at the cuffs,
the lining gone thin,
heavy with old rain.
It does not keep me warm.
Maybe it never did.

What happens if I lay it down?
What if I unbutton each grief-worn sleeve
and underneath there is no one I recognize?
What if misery has been my truest language,
and I have mistaken fluency for home?

I am too comfortable being miserable.
It is a room with the curtains drawn,
a chair pulled close to the dark.
I know where the floor gives way.
I know which silences mean be still.
I know how to live here
without ever calling it life.

And yet —
some days the past forgets to tap my shoulder.
Some days the ache loosens its grip
and I do not know whether to call that mercy
or betrayal.

Even now, when I dream of another life,
I do not know what my hands would do
if they were finally empty.

Still, I can almost see it —
what waits beyond me,
what I have been dreaming toward:
a door at the end of a long hallway,
light spilling through the narrow seam,
gold as a promise I cannot yet believe.

But the voice inside me,
low and practiced,
says no.
Turn back.
This dimness is the only country
that will ever claim you.

I remain there —
one hand in the sleeve,
one hand lifted toward the light,
learning that wanting another life
is its own kind of reaching,
that even this pause,
this almost,
is proof I have not given up.