I want a house with a movie-script family,
but instead I’m boxed inside a drug-stained apartment
stacked high with regrets.

In my lonely chair, I rehearse old dreams,
but time presses its boot on my back,
crushing the last pieces of who I thought I’d become.

Dirty carpet. Mold-rotted sinks.
Family heirlooms buried in dust and shame.
Clothes twenty years old, folded like memories that never
changed.
Photos of the past hang around my neck like a noose.
Tears gather on the pile of bills that keep me anchored here.
Polished instruments — untouched, avoided —
because I can’t face the songs they’d try to drag out of me.

Rooms arranged with objects I think “normal people” own,
to pretend I still know how to be normal.
Burned-out light bulbs. Stolen toilet paper
from the market down the street.
An empty kitchen, because the drugs ate the food budget
again.

The living room is my home gym: pacing back and forth
until the madness shakes loose.
The bedroom is my grave:
a dug-out pit where I’ve spent too many years
wondering what if, and never getting out to try.
So many times I’ve clawed out of death’s box,
made it a few steps ahead
before God cracks the ground in front of me,
reminding me I still owe penance
for every sin I’ve tried to outrun.

No one visits. My cheap tricks burn out fast. People stay safe by staying far away.

You can tell I’m spiraling by the hair I don’t cut,
the clothes I don’t wash,
the days I hide indoors
waiting for a door — any door —
to open me back into the world.

If I could escape this life I fake satisfaction in, I would.
If I had the courage for a normal day,
I’d be a better human
than whatever broken shadow I’ve become.

I walk a path to death —
the devil’s gift, wrapped as an escape.
Late-night madness. Sun-lit days slept through.
Sometimes I look forward to my own ending
more than I look forward to anything else.
Take away the 2 a.m. messages I send to ghosts —
old faces I wouldn’t even recognize now —
hoping one might say they’re glad to hear from me.
Hope is a foolish god; it demands loyalty
and gives nothing in return.

No one answers my nostalgic pleas
to feel like I did years before I lost myself
to whatever the hell I am today.
So I stay here, waiting for the next eviction notice,
holding the lights on
because I’m terrified of closing my eyes
and dying alone in this bed,
never having a family beside me