Pain inside me

There is a hollow in my chest where light once lived, now filled with shadows that twist and coil like restless snakes. The pain inside me is quiet but constant, a river running beneath frozen ground, its current pulling me under even when I walk in the sun. It hums in my bones, in the spaces between breaths, a rhythm I can no shake, a whisper that reminds me of every fracture, every scar I’ve tried to hide. I carry it like a secret, a weight too heavy to name, and yet it speaks in every pulse, every ache, every moment my heart skips and falls into itself. I have tried to flee it, to bury it under laughter, under words, under smiles that do not reach the corners where the real pain waits. But it waits anyway, patient, relentless, and I am left trembling in its wake. There is fire in this pain, and ice, and a storm that never ends. It teaches me my limits, my fragility, my fierce, stubborn survival. Even as it breaks me, it shapes me, carves me into someone who knows the weight of silence, the depth of longing, the ache of being alive in a body that carries so much. I am a vessel of hurt, of memory, of loss, of quiet despair and sharp, jagged hope. And though it presses on me, though it fill