i write to survive

Before Night Falls (2000) | source

I write to survive  
in the quiet hours when words  
slip like whispers,  
escaping the noise of days  
that demand too much,  
and give too little.  
I trace my thoughts onto pages,  
broken like bones  
set to heal with time.  
Each sentence a salve,  
each line a stitch  
holding me together  
when the world pulls apart  
at the seams.

I write because it’s easier  
than speaking  
my heart, the weight of it  
too heavy to share,  
but on paper, it floats  
like feathers in the breeze.  
I let the ink bleed  
into spaces I cannot fill  
with anything but stories,  
memories that refuse to fade,  
and dreams I’m too scared to say  
out loud.

There’s safety in these words,  
a kind of shelter  
from the storm that rages  
outside my door.  
I write to make sense  
of the chaos,  
to rearrange the fragments  
into something that looks  
like hope.  
When silence swallows me whole,  
I write to hear my own voice  
and remember  
that I am still here.

I write to survive,  
to breathe between the margins,  
to find a way through  
this endless maze  
of thoughts, tangled and raw.  
In each line, I find a piece  
of who I was  
and who I’m becoming,  
the boy who writes  
not for glory,  
but for the chance  
to feel alive  
one word at a time.