t w e n t y - f o u r

you're everything that you hate now

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I'm twenty-four and I'm living as someone's answered prayer, a whispered "Please, let her live" that some deity took a little too literally. I exist. I breathe. By definition, I am alive. From the outside, I am cured. But every one of the heartbeats that they pled for is a nightmare behind my eyes.

I am a wish without a coin, a marionette without a puppeteer, the survive without the thrive. A shattered mirror sloppily repaired with duct tape, and I hate who I see in the glass between the cracks.

I'm twenty-four and trying to fill the empty void where her voice was, trying to remember what she used to say—that pain is gain,

but it's not the right kind of pain anymore.

She speaks louder the harder I try to shut her down. She cannot exist without me. She fights for her life as I fight for mine, a crippling symbiosis that leaves me broken and her stronger than ever.

I'm twenty-four, and nothing has changed.