Nothing is fun anymore.
The laughter has dried, cracked and peeled,
Peeling, flaking, crumbling to the floor,
Dust settles,
Sharp corners,
No warmth, or anything human.

Walls pulse with the stench of stillness,
Gray-yellow breath of stagnation,
Air too thick to swallow, too thin to choke.
The light doesn’t reach here. It stopped trying.
It gave up like everything else,
Like I did.

Hands move, but not by choice,
Legs drag, but only because they have to.
Why do they have to?
I don’t know.
Nothing does.
But still, they do, and they do, and they do,
Until they don’t anymore.

Outside, the sun screams in silence.
It burns with a brightness that is not for me.
Not for anyone here,
Inside this room where even shadows can’t grow.
Where light is an idea, a memory,
Where breath is the ghost of something that might have been alive, once.

The air doesn’t whisper,
It grinds.
A low groan, a metal scrape.
It twists into my lungs, dry, cold,
Hollow like a tin can,
Like everything else.

Because,
Nothing is fun anymore.

Blue seeps in, like droplets through the cracks,
slow, at first, a faint stain,
barely noticed
but it spreads, it spreads like it knows something.
It curls around the edges of my sight,
coats everything in its thick, drowning waves.

I reach for colour, for something else, anything else
but it’s gone, swallowed in the flood.
The sky’s blue, the walls are blue, the floor is blue.
Even my skin now looks blue under this endless wash.
Everything is tinted,
infected,
and I can’t scrub it out.
Not with light, not with words, not with the tired smile I pull on each morning
like a mask that’s slowly cracking.

I put on glasses, dark, sharp,
pretend they change the shade, just a little,
but the effort is lead-heavy now,
it clings to me like chains, dragging,
each step out the door a battle.
The sun is too far, too distant, too buried in the haze.
I squint into the light, but it’s pale,
washed over in the same unrelenting hue.
Blue on blue on blue.

Every day it creeps closer
the infection digs deeper,
roots into my chest,
numbs my hands,
wraps around my bones until that ache
with the weight of it all.
There’s no stopping it,
not anymore.

Tomorrow, maybe, I won’t get up.
Maybe tomorrow, the glasses stay on the table.
The smile won’t fit, the door won’t open,
and I’ll sit here, sinking,
beneath the blue tide,
watching it flood every corner

until,
I’m gone.

I am the Trash Panda,
the one and only,
queen of discarded treasures.
Proudest of the night-dwellers,
claws deep in a feast of yesterday’s leftovers
your half-eaten sandwich
(it’s mine now).

While others scurry,
I strut.
While others sneak,
I dig
unashamed, unbothered,
gleeful in my pile of glorious garbage.
Banana peels? A crown.
Soda cans? My sceptre.

Let raccoons be meek,
but not me
no, I am the Trashiest.
Guardian of dumpsters,
Connoisseur of scraps.
Dignity? I threw it away ages ago,
along with your stale bagels.

You see a mess
I see an empire.
And I wear my mask like a badge of honour,
tail high, belly full,
the trashiest Trash Panda known to mankind.
Bow before my trash heap,
if you dare.

I am beyond saving
a hollow thing, a shape that only looks human.
No spark left, just empty eyes staring back.
I’m not alive,
not really.
I’m surviving.
Dragging these bones through another day,
breathing, but not feeling,
moving, but not living.

The person you’re looking for isn’t here,
hasn’t been for a long time.
Left somewhere back there,
buried in the dirt where I should have stayed,
where I could have disappeared quietly.
But no, I was pulled out
hauled along,
patched together with scraps of hope and false promises.
What’s the point?

All I have now is time
a few more years of just existing,
each one heavier than the last.
Why didn’t I just sink?
Why force myself down this path of broken days
and empty nights?
What am I supposed to do with this half-life?
I’m just a husk, a shell,
something that should have faded
but instead is kept breathing.

Surviving.
But that’s not living.

I don’t want to be a memory,
a name on your tongue that tastes of loss.
I don’t want to be a story
a faded photo passed around.
I want to be here
flesh and bone,
breath and heartbeat,
someone you can reach out and touch.

Not a ghost.
Not a grave.
Not a life cut short,
another unfinished chapter that everyone reads and sighs,
muttering, what a shame, what a waste.
I want to be more than a tale,
more than a flash of life burned out,
a bright light that died before the dawn.

I don't want to be that.
I don't want to be a shadow for you to hold onto,
something to remember instead of someone to know.
I want to keep walking beside you,
not locked in some past tense prison,
where my laughter is just an echo
and my words are only what used to be.

I don’t want to be a face you visit in stone,
don’t want to be a reminder of what could have been.
I want to live, I want to be, I want to breathe.
I don't want to be made into a memory.
Not yet.

I am a cancer,
spreading through the places I once called home.
A malignancy woven into the roots of every community I've touched.
the very ones I helped grow,
now rotting from the inside out
because of me.
Cells gone wrong,
twisted, mutating, pushing against what was meant to thrive.

It wasn’t always like this
I remember when I was part of the fabric,
threads in the weave, strong and steady.
But something shifted,
turned dark, sharp, toxic.
Now I’m a poison seeping through the seams,
a blight on everything I helped build.

I need to be cut out,
precisely, methodically,
no hesitation.
I must be removed, excised,
tissue scraped raw until there’s nothing left of me,
no trace of infection.

I am not just harmful,
I am the harm.
An illness spreading through the marrow of these places,
the very bones groaning under the weight of my presence.
Every day I remain, the damage spreads,
inch by inch, cell by cell.
Every breath I take here is another crack in the foundation,
another piece crumbling away,
another scar I leave behind.

So cut deep.
Deeper still.
Scrub out every part of me.
Erase the history,
burn out the roots
leave nothing.
Let the community heal in the silence that follows,
the emptiness where I used to be.

Better to carve me out completely
than let the rot go further.
Better to rip and tear, to cauterize what’s left,
than to risk what might linger,
to risk the contamination spreading,
to let even the shadow of me remain.

I am the cancer.
The only cure is to be gone.

I’ve thrown it all away, haven’t I?
Everything we built, brick by brick,
stone by stone,
shattered under the weight.
Too many cracks from too many nights
when I couldn’t keep it together,
when my darkness spill out,
unconstrained,
pouring over you in waves.

I know what I’ve done.
I saw it happen,
slow and certain,
every breakdown,
every time I let anger flare,
the guilt eat me alive,
the blame clawing its way to the surface.
And I hurled it all at you,
again,
and again,
and again.

What did I expect?
That you could keep carrying it all?
The dead weight of my mind,
the sharp edges of my words.

I didn’t just crumble;
I pulled you down with me,
one piece at a time,
each outburst a hook,
each apology a stone.
You tried to hold on,
I know you did.
But I dragged you too far.
I became an anchor,
heavy, relentless, pulling you into the deep.

And now you’re gone,
or almost gone,
standing on the edge of something breaking,
looking back at me with that tired,
worn look in your eyes,
like you’re weighing the cost of staying.
Like you can’t take the burden anymore,
the burden I became.

Now I'm something people run from.
And who could blame you?
Who wants to stay within a storm?
that never calms?
With a friend who drowns you in their own sorrow,
chokes you on their fears,
smothers every bit of light
until you can’t breathe without tasting pain.

I’ve done this.
I see it now,
the space I carved between us,
the distance growing wider each time.

So, if you walk away,
if you leave,
I’ll understand.
I’ll still be here, weighed down by what’s left of myself,
the pieces I threw at you,
the wreckage I tried to make yours.

I never meant to be a burden,
but I am.
And I see now.
I’ve thrown everything away.