Drown

By K

cr: pinterest

when you come to my funeral, please come a little earlier. because the people burying me will not wait for you the way i once did. they will not leave the door half-open, will not linger in silence, will not search for your footsteps inside every passing hour.

because unlike me, they will know how to let the dead go. it’s strange, isn’t it? how people admire the ones who know how to survive. the ones who stay calm, who keep smiling, who somehow continue swimming even when the waves grow violent.

and when you become too good at it, people begin to mistake survival for strength.

they forget that even good swimmers can drown too. quietly. slowly. without making a sound loud enough for anyone to notice.

perhaps that is the cruelest part— not the drowning itself, but how everyone assumes you were built to survive it.

so you keep carrying oceans inside your chest, pretending your lungs do not burn. pretending exhaustion is not slowly turning your bones into something unbearably heavy.

and maybe one day, when my silence finally lasts too long, people will call it sudden. though the truth is— i have been sinking for quite some time.