Days I Let Drift

I wore my youth like shoes too loose to feel, Each step unsure, yet never dared to run. My heart was clenched, a rusting, idle wheel, While days dissolved beneath the quiet sun. I was the empty desk in every room, A chair unclaimed in stories being told. A lantern hung but never lit the gloom, Too scared to burn, too comfortable in cold. My hands could’ve built gardens in the dust, Planted hope where hunger cracked the land. But I let time collect a skin of rust, A clock asleep inside a hollow hand. I see now how my silence wore a face, How every shrug became a turning cheek. I watched my world fall slowly out of place, And never found the strength to rise and speak. My voice, a violin without its strings, Could’ve been music in a darker room. My arms, not folded, could’ve lifted things, Yet curled instead like roots that chose the tomb. The mirror weeps for all I might have done, A shattered frame of versions never known. Each shard a chance I buried with the sun, Each breath a debt I never paid or owned. Still, I remain—though fractured, still alive, The ashes hum, and embers call my name. Let me be soil where better seeds survive, And not a ghost who only dreamed of flame.