dark compass
There are nights
where loneliness doesn’t hurt,
it stares.
It sits at the edge of my bed
like it paid rent,
like it knows my name better than I do,
like it’s memorized every excuse
I’ve ever made for why love
never stayed.
I trace my life in reverse,
looking for the moment
it went wrong.
The sentence I spoke too late,
the silence I held too long,
the version of myself
that might’ve been chosen
if I had been softer, louder, different.
I keep asking the dark
why it never works out.
Why effort turns into echo.
Why hope keeps dissolving
right when I reach for it.
Sometimes I think
if girls made the first move
things wouldn’t feel like war.
Like I wouldn’t have to sharpen myself
into something impressive,
something worthy of a glance.
Maybe I wouldn’t feel like
I’m always auditioning
for a love that already decided
to look elsewhere.
I watch couples drift past me
like parallel lives I’ll never touch;
laughing at nothing,
bonding over the same songs,
the same artists on repeat,
their souls syncing
without instructions.
They didn’t contort themselves.
They didn’t beg the universe.
They were just… themselves.
And that realization
cuts deeper than rejection.
Because I see it now :
some of them once lay awake
the same way I do,
counting cracks in the ceiling,
wondering if being unwanted
was permanent.
They stood where I stand.
They felt what I feel.
And somehow,
they were chosen.