I don’t pretend anymore. The lie is worn out, like the soles of my shoes tracing the same cracked sidewalk to the same corner store. My hands don’t shake until they’re empty. Then they become strangers grasping at ghosts in brown paper bags. I tell myself it’s just one more. One more to shut out the noise, to soften the mirror, to dull the ache of waking up still me. Some people consume for hunger. I do, too— but mine’s in the bones, in the blood, in the black corners of memory I’d rather drown than remember. This isn’t a poem, really. It’s a whispered apology to no one. To everyone. To the empty shelf I left behind. To myself, before I needed saving.