Fragments Still Move Forward

There is no glory here.

Only the soft crunch of broken glass

beneath boots that do not stop.

I walk because I must —

not toward anything,

just away from the wreckage

that used to be me.

🖤

My reflection is a shattered mirror

sprawled across a floor I can’t clean.

Each shard holds a different version —

some screaming,

some praying,

some so quiet they vanish.

And yet all of them are me.

All of them drag the same corpse forward.

🖤

They call it resilience.

But resilience is just ruin that didn’t die.

It’s the cracked porcelain smile

on a face that’s long since forgotten

what joy ever felt like.

I don’t thrive.

I persist.

I decay in motion.

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The soul — if that’s still the word —

isn’t whole.

It’s a jagged thing now.

Fractal, fragmented,

splintered like frost on old bone.

I hold it together with ritual —

a rep, a step, a sentence scrawled in silence.

Little acts of defiance

against the erosion.

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I do not rest.

Rest invites thought.

And thought reminds me.

So I move.

Discipline, not desire.

Motion, not meaning.

Because if I stop, the weight collapses me.

Because if I pause, I remember who I was

before the fire took it all.

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Each day ends

with more debris in my chest.

More time burned.

More hope buried under lists and calories

and minutes spent pretending this all builds to something.

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But I still do it.

Not because I believe.

Belief is a luxury for the unbroken.

I do it because I haven’t lost the war —

only every battle.

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I am dust held together by habit.

A dead star with legs.

A mind gnawing on its own roots

just to feel something other than the cold.

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But I take the step.

And then the next.

And if all that’s left of me is ash and echoes,

then let them be the kind

that still moved forward.

🖤

🪓 Like what you read?🪓

🪙 Then toss a coin into the fountain.

Make a wish —

for wilder words, sharper truths,

and more wild-folk with wild hair doing wild things.

Each offering stirs the water, feeds the fire,

and helps one such beast keep writing beneath the stars.

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