Fragments of Cassandra

I’m not broken,
I’m just exhausted.

Exhausted from carrying storms
inside a body that still gets up every morning.
From smiling softly
while something inside me caves in quietly.
From saying “I’m okay”
like the words themselves could keep me alive.

I’m not depressed.
I just disappear in small ways.

In long showers.
In dark rooms.
In silence stretched so thin
it starts to sound like drowning.

I laugh at things that hurt me.
I make poetry out of wounds
so nobody notices I’m bleeding.

I joke about death
because it’s easier than admitting
how often it sits beside me.

I’m not sad all the time.
That would be simpler.

Instead, I go numb.
I scroll through lives I cannot feel connected to,
watching everyone else live
while I learn how to survive quietly.

People say,

“you’re so strong.”

But strength has never felt heroic to me.
It feels like bending until your spine forgets
what standing straight was supposed to mean.

Every heartbreak leaves something behind.

A crack.
A scar.
A tenderness that never heals correctly.

And maybe that’s what exhaustion really is—
not wanting to die,

but being tired of carrying
every version of yourself
that nobody came back for.


Be'ahava,
The Mourning Bird