The Silence

There’s a silence in me now
where the fight used to be.

Not peace 
just the part after surrender,
where everything feels distant
and familiar at the same time.

I used to swear I’d change.
Every sunrise was a promise,
every empty glass a confession.
But time wears the sharp edges down
and leaves only routine.

I don’t drink to feel alive.
I drink to stop remembering
what it was like when I was.

The cycle is older than I am.
It moves through me
like tide,
like winter,
like something inherited.

I stay clean long enough
to believe I’m healed.
Then the night arrives
with that quiet ache in the chest.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just that subtle pull
toward forgetting.

And I go back.

Not because I want to.
Not because I choose to.
But because I haven’t learned
how to live with myself
fully awake.

There is no triumph here.
No collapse.
Just repetition.

We call that survival
because the alternative
is honesty.

And honesty would break me.

So I breathe.
I stand.
I drink.
I fall.

And I rise again,
unchanged,
only older.

Foregone.
Long before I noticed.