I love them still, or think I do, yet every breath beside them tastes like rust. Their voices scrape the quiet in my room, and something inside me begins to rust. Gifts feel cursed, a bracelet turns to chain, witchcraft in the colors that I wear. They chew me out for daring to remain a child who simply wants to breathe the air. I swallow sickness when they speak my name, my tongue goes dry, my stomach knots in flame. I have learned to speak only when spoken to, a ghost who haunts the house that bears my name. I dream of leaving, dream of staying gone, of fading so completely from their mind that when I am dust they will never feel the dawn of missing what they slowly left behind. A darker part still whispers they should cry, should taste the weight of every strangled year. But mostly I just want to say goodbye to feeling wrong for wanting to be here. I am choking on the love that turned to wire, on rules that cut the wings before they grew. I want to live, not set the world on fire, just space enough to let the real me through. One day this cage will crack, the sky will split, and I will step outside without the ache. Until that hour, I hold the ache and sit with poems made of all the hearts I break, my own, and theirs, and every fragile bit.