Everything is a lie, a curtain pulled across the stage, paint peeling, actors mouthing lines they don’t believe. I don’t like you your voice is a rusted hinge, creaking in the silence, a sound that lingers too long. No tenderness lives here, only the scrape of stone against stone, sparks that never catch fire. You annoy me, like a fly circling the rim of a glass, like rain tapping on a roof when I crave stillness. I spend hours with you, watching shadows crawl across the wall, pushing time forward like a heavy cart on uneven ground, waiting for the moment when the sky finally breaks open and something worth living for steps through the light. I use you as a mirror, to see the cracks in my own reflection, to trace the jagged edges I refuse to carry into tomorrow. You show me the weeds in my garden, and I learn which ones I will never water again. You are not the one your presence is a thorn pressed deep, a crown of pressure around my temples. My eyes ache like glass ready to shatter, my head a drumbeat of pain that will not quiet. I would rather drift into sleep, wander into dreamscapes where unicorns run through silver fields, where rivers sing instead of choke, where sadness dissolves like salt in rain. There, I am free no curtain, no hinge, no thorn. Only the wide meadow, the endless sky, and the promise that I will not settle for less than the fire that makes the stars burn.