a creature of grey

You drank from me like a starving soul, drawing out every drop of light until I was dry, brittle, and barely there. You were a mirror I didn’t want to see, reflecting a home I thought I had escaped — a place where love was jagged and cruel, where comfort was a trap that tightened its grip the harder I tried to breathe. You weren’t to blame for the shadow you carried, but you wore it so well, and I couldn’t help but stumble upon the familiarity of its weight.

You became a storm that I stepped into willingly, whispers like lullabies, soft and beguiling, binding me to you with threads too fine to see.

And every time I reached for the door, your words curled around my ankles like vines, pulling me back with crumbs too sweet.

Now, I am in ruin, scattered like ashes on the wind, searching for the pieces I gave away to make you whole. I handed you fragments of myself, one by one, until I was nothing but a hollow vessel, emptied of color, my edges frayed and breaking.

What do I have left but dust? Dust, and the crumbled pages of your assurances—soaked in longing, but never truth.

You were cruel, you were empty, a creature of greys pretending at color.

And now I’m here, clawing at the darkness you left behind, desperate to reclaim what I lost in you. Every piece I find feels fragile, unsteady, as if the cracks in me might never close.

I wish I had never known the pull of your emptiness, never stepped willingly into the void you carried. All I can do is scream into the spaces, furious at the parts of me you took, furious at myself for giving them away so freely.

Will I ever find them again?

Or will I forever stand on this precipice, holding my own shattered edges, praying they don’t crumble beneath my touch?

— Lux