The air between us, a thick, familiar haze, now just… dull. each word a small, deliberate cut, expecting the sting, preparing the defense. That was the currency of our connection, a hate transaction, balanced somehow. But hope, that stubborn weed, it tried to sprout even there, in the cracked concrete of our shared space. Not hope for sweetness, no, that ship long sailed and sank, but hope for *advancement*. Advancement out of the mud, past the constant churning, into a quiet clearing, perhaps, where the poison didn't cling so heavily. and the world through your lens, a relentless downward slope. The daily deluge of human noise, the stress you manufacture, it floods me daily. I have learned to mute the frequency. To feel nothing about the life that around us because to feel it all, the sheer, unadulterated human mess, it would shatter the fragile casing I’ve built. You all do this, unknowingly perhaps, you pour your ke acid rain, and I stand here, attempting to absorb it, my own intentions, pure as deflected, tainted by proximity. I see the wrongs, the endless tally of what has been mishandled, the patience that A person can only endure so much wear, so much deliberate friction, before the core spirit dulls. And yet, somewhere along the way, the fight stopped being The anger, an exhausting fuel. It settled into a strange acceptance, a quiet agreement that this is simply the shape you inhabit. This is who you are, I look for the love I carry, the residue of warmth I still possess, the part of me that still believes in kindness beyond obligation, but the light from that core does not reach your eyes. You don't see it. It reflects your own preoccupation, a ghost image, unnoticed, unacknowledged. So, we stand here, in this truce, this absence of open warfare. I hoped for progress, a step toward something cleaner, but maybe, in this strange egativity, even standing still is a form of terrifying advance. A quiet, numb survival. Error Icon Address not found Your message wasn't delivered to [email protected] because the domain gmail.vom couldn't be found. Check for typos or unnecessary spaces and try again. LEARN MORE The response was: DNS Error: DNS type 'mx' lookup of gmail.vom responded with code NXDOMAIN Domain name not found: gmail.vom For more information, go to https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadRcptDomain

Feeling guilty bout something