how i forget the living

🖤

most people grieve the loss—
by remembering.

i grieve
by deleting.

no altars.
no flashbacks.
no screenshots.
no late-night nostalgia.

i don’t check your socials.
i won’t look you up.
not tomorrow.
not next year.
not when i can’t breathe.

i don’t wonder.
i don’t miss.
i don’t slip.
(i make sure of that)

i block it out.
that’s what trauma does.
it erases what hurts.

and
you
all,
you hurt.

you do not exist here.
you don’t get to.

i bury you.
deep.
quiet.
unmarked.

and i don’t visit the grave.

this is how i endure—
not by forgiving.
not by healing.
but by forgetting
the living.

i’ve done it my whole life.
to blood.
to family.
to friends who blinked
instead of choosing me.
to lovers who hurt
and slept just fine.

and now—
to you.

no text.
no closure.
no eulogy.

just silence.
then absence.
then nothing.

because every time
you chose to be
cold
cruel
absent
to the softest version of me—

you killed your place here.

staying tethered
to people who watched me drown
and checked the time
is treason.

this isn’t heartbreak.

it’s oxygen.