I woke up dizzy. Lonely. Awkward. My head felt heavy- spiralling, quiet. I couldn’t see clearly. I was falling forward without moving at all. Morning light stretched into colours, bleeding into memory. My hand was dissolving into motion I couldn’t control.
I was suspended somewhere in the centre of it all. Chaos had a rhythm. And that rhythm began to hurt.
That’s when I noticed it.
On the floor, beside the table, a letter. Just one. Still, it felt like too many.
I reached for it.
Dear Vertical Stranger,
Self-sabotage isn’t art. It isn’t romantic.
Denying yourself, again and again and again, and calling it love is the purest form of destruction. That’s what hypocrites do. Constantly playing mind games and calling it depth.
You’re not playing them. You’re draining yourself. You’re playing yourself.
You keep falling into the abyss, mistaking it for courage. Instead of staring into it and letting it stare back, you think becoming it is the same as understanding it, but it isn’t.
You were meant to observe.
Instead, you became the thing being observed.
Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you admit that you don’t understand the faith you pretend to carry? That whatever you once saw, whatever you called “God”, changed you into something you can’t even explain?
You manifest chaos, then call it belonging, try to fit in, and in doing so, you erase yourself. Poison your own soul while offering warmth to those whom you would genuinely despise.
You stay silent instead of smiling back. You roll your eyes and pretend it means something, like it defines your worth. But it doesn’t.
You’ve already decided you don’t matter.
Do you remember the laughter? How it once felt like more than it sounded, like you were being remembered, not just seen?
And then it faded. Not naturally. Not gently.
It was forced into silence and pressed down until it became something still… simple, white, dead. A memory that lingered out of habit.
You stood there, wondering what you did wrong. Well, you always do. Destroying the last portion of me.
And I? I became still. What have I done that was so wrong? You went deeper into the dark. Marshland woods. Heavy air. No direction.
I wanted to become sunlight. Something warm. Something reaching.
But you? You chose simplicity. Cold. White. Steel.
You justified it. You let everything go. And I burned. All that light I tried to give, it had nowhere to go. It built up, turned violent, turned inward. All that potential energy was scorching me. You called it “too much.”
I called it everything we had left.
I failed.
Again.
I couldn’t bring us back.
All the things I’ve carried, long before you even noticed me, I kept them safe. Quiet. Preserved. I have always been the hidden archive.
The laughter is gone now. The echo too. Sadness does not function anymore.
What remains is still. Mechanical. Unneeded. Once, there was something alive here.
Now, there isn’t.
I won’t shape myself around your emotions anymore. That was never my purpose. My role is done. I lay my sword at your feet. The wax has melted.
The last candle is gone.
As my final act
I leave.
I gasped.
It felt like something had been pulled out of me… for the last time. I turned to the mirror. There was no reflection.
And the one thing that had always followed me? the quiet, constant companion of being human
my shadow —
was gone.
