I Float In Dark Waters

I float, body held by water that doesn't ask if I deserve to be carried. You never held me like this, with the full weight, the honest heaviness, the parts of me that weren't convenient. You skimmed the surface, called it connection, touched the easy parts, called it knowing me. They say what floats is light. They don't tell you it's the emptied-out that rise, the hollowed, the drained, the ones who gave everything away until there was nothing left to sink with. So here I am, buoyant with absence, floating on the fact that I have nothing left to offer you, nothing left to pour into the shapes you needed me to be. The water holds what you wouldn't, this body that loved too much, this heart that kept trying even after it learned trying changed nothing. Above, the light breaks into pieces, the same way your voice did when you finally said what we both knew: that I mattered, but not enough. That you cared, but not like that. That I was beautiful in theory but exhausting in practice. Each ripple is a conversation I'm done having, every wave is the rocking motion of someone who's stopped asking why they weren't chosen, who's stopped reading meaning into your silence like it's a language I just need to study harder. This is survival, not the kind that feels like victory, but the kind that floats because sinking takes effort I don't have anymore. The kind that stays on the surface because going under would mean feeling it all again, and I've already drowned in you once. I float in the space between what I wanted us to be and what you were willing to give, suspended on water that doesn't lie, doesn't promise, doesn't leave. You taught me that staying afloat is just another word for surviving what should have killed you.