Fragments

Since meeting you, I've been kinder to everyone. I think everyone I've met since has gotten a little of you.

were it mine to

give, i would gift

you the peace

that comes with

knowing there is

absolutely

nothing wrong with you

Don't tell me what they said about me; tell me why they felt so comfortable saying it to you.

If one wants pretty nurse, one must be patient

i don’t remember what we talked about.

i remember the fire,

the cold air, the loud laughs,

someone always running somewhere.

nobody was trying to make a memory.

we were just there,

all of us, at once.

the fire went out hours later.

the warmth never really did.

I just cant help it.

Lucas M. Brown

Their note on Substack

There's difference in want and need

if I need you,

I am vulnerable

if I want you,

I am greedy.

The seven sins of loving you…

no matter how obsessed you've been with your own vanishing, there will always be someone who still wants you whole

I helped a stranger climb a mountain then I realized I too was at the top

We romanticize the stars, but forget that it's the dark that makes them visible.

sometimes,

I wonder,

am I,

the love I give,

or the love I get,

am I.

the things I write,

or the things I erase,

am I,

the words I speak,

or the silence I swallow,

am I,

the wounds I show, or the scars I hide,

am I,

the hands that reach,

or the hands that let go,

am I,

the memories I hold,

or the memories I let go,

am I the man in the mirror,

or the shadows he can't face

How do you seek freedom from the hands that built your captivity?

So goddamn true

gabee

what it feels like to be writing on substack sometimes:

Their note on Substack

Not everything is supposed to feel like something else.

Forgive yourself for not knowing earlier what only time could teach you.

Ive been wondering this for a while, ik you'll never find time to read what i post, but i rrally wanna know: Are we actually friends anymore, or are we just two people who remember being friends?”

Sometimes friendships survive for a long time because two people have so much history that the history itself becomes the glue. You can still know someone's stories, remember old jokes, have years of memories, and yet slowly become strangers in the present.

be the things you loved most about the people who are gone

i still love them... i just somehow stopped knowing what's actually going on in their lives

I stopped expecting anything from people because I thought it would save me from disappointment. I thought if I expected nothing, I’d have nothing to be hurt by. But I didn’t realise that somewhere along the way, I’d also stop feeling like I mattered enough to expect anything from anyone. And somehow, that hurts more than the disappointment ever did.🫠

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

and there will be days when

I will be gone,

and I won't have to

worry about

you missing me,

because if that was to happen

I wouldnt be gone.

Is having kids the most selfless thing in the world or the most selfish?

You are not scared to move on, You are scared that if they see that you have moved on, they won't come back.

with the same teeth you taste both, my agony and yours, the corners of your mouth still smeared with blood so I kiss you with the same passion

oh beloved, let our miseries be one

I moved on because I thought I saw love in their eyes but it was a reflection of mine

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire

I knew that it was cruel to be so optimistic, but, in my solitude, I couldn't resist the urge and spent entire days basking in idiotic fantasies, sometimes verging on prayer.

People want to win without losing. But even heaven demands death….

There are nights the heart becomes a locked museum, and every memory walks its halls barefoot.

Last night, Swati returned to me there.

Not really her.

Only the outline of her.

The ghost left behind when love finishes eating a person alive. In the dream, it had already been a week since I blocked her.

Seven days since I performed my own small funeral with trembling hands.

Seven days since I swallowed the key.

I met one of her friends somewhere colorless and unfinished, the way dreams build worlds out of fog and leftover grief.

And I asked about her.

The question came out of me like blood from a reopened wound.

“How is she?”

Her friend smiled gently, almost carelessly.

“She’s fine.”

Fine.

Such a harmless word.

A teacup word.

A Sunday morning word.

Yet it split me open.

Because I had secretly believed sorrow was proof of love.

That if I carried this ache like a cathedral collapsing inward, she must carry some smaller ruin too.

But there she was, untouched by the weather of me. I hated how easily I could still picture her replying to reels, talking about books, existing inside her routines, while I was still turning our silence over like a stone in my pocket.

The dream said what daylight never dares to:

that some people survive your absence so beautifully it makes you question whether you were ever present at all.

And I woke with that terrible loneliness i had never felt before, the feeling of being unbearably alive in a world that continues calmly without you. As if I had mistaken being needed for being unforgettable.