He died a thousand times.
Not in war,
not in the spectacle of violence,
but in the small drownings—
the tightening silence
between the word he gave
and the love that did not stay.
Each morning he rose
with breath full of ash,
lungs filling with the echo
of names whispered only in dreams.
Women who left him
with their perfume clinging to the walls,
like ghosts he invited in,
fed, and worshipped
until they vanished
without even a rustle of goodbye.
His heart became a road
walked by too many,
worn down to the bones
of trust,
until there was nothing left
but a bitter earth
that no seed could enter.
He tried to tend it—
dug deep with trembling hands,
watered it with poems,
with promises.
Still, the soil refused.
It hardened with each grief
until even the rain avoided him.
He died in cafés,
in the pauses between music,
in the curve of a back
turning toward another.
He died when letters stopped arriving.
When the phone fell silent
like a grave.
He died again
the day he stopped believing
His name belonged
in someone else’s mouth.
But there came a stillness—
not peace,
not salvation,
but the absence of ache.
A granite quiet
settled in his chest
where once a bird thrashed.
He did not mourn the final death.
He welcomed it—
a cold wind
that no longer hurt.
Now, he carries a stone
where a heart once beat.
It does not sing.
It does not crack.
It simply rests.
There is no more longing,
no more reaching.
Only the solidity
of what cannot be broken
again.
Only the relief
of never needing
to love
like that
again.
Broken Author 