Unpublished, But Alive

I wrote every night

while the world slept

and windows stayed dark,

while notifications found other names

more worthy of light.

No readers arrived.

No hands came together in praise.

The silence sat beside me,

patient, heavy, honest—

a mirror that did not blink.

Still, the words breathed.

They rose from places

I did not know how to survive without.

Each line a thin bridge

over a day that nearly broke me.

I was not saving an audience.

I was saving myself.

The poems kept my pulse steady

when nothing else could.

They stayed

when hope learned how to leave.

And maybe that is enough—

to be unread yet alive,

to write into the dark

and discover

that something answered back.

That had to mean something.