She Stayed

By Sinchana Srikanth Iyengar

She sat in the ruins, where silence screamed,

Where my broken heart stitched together dreams—

with thread made of hope and glass-dust pain,

she sat in the storm, and called it my name.

She listened—God, she listened deep,

to the grief I buried, layer steep.

To the nights I wished I’d just not wake,

to the smile I carved, fake after fake.

She heard the poems I never wrote down,

the ones made of sobs and swallowing sound.

She read my skin like Braille of ache,

even the parts I tried to remake.

I told her of hands that trembled in prayer,

of love that hurt, of dreams stripped bare,

of eyes that watched me fall apart,

and of how I stitched razors into my heart.

She never flinched. Not once. Not once.

Even when I told her I saw no sun.

Even when I laughed with blood in my teeth,

She stayed beside my ghost beneath.

She knew the chapters I’d never tell—

the betrayals etched like private hell,

the guilt that clung, a second skin,

the shame of all the wars within.

She saw the girl who danced with death,

who stitched her sorrow into breath.

She held the hand I never offered,

and still, she stayed—unshaken, unbothered.

Why? I’ll never know the cost

of loving someone this deeply lost.

But she paid it all. With patience, grace,

she saw me—not the mask, but the face.

She stayed. Through storms I summoned.

Through nights I ruined and mornings I shunned.

Through panic attacks dressed up as smiles,

through self-hate stitched in violent miles.

She stayed.

When I couldn’t stay with myself.

When I screamed through locked doors.

When I cried into bedsheets and cursed the mirror.

When I stopped praying.

When I wanted to disappear.

She was there.

Not to fix.

Not to speak.

But to witness—me. Entire. Weak.

She was not my savior.

She was not my cure.

But she was the shore—

When I couldn’t swim anymore.

And if I am anything at all now,

a girl with breath and not a breakdown,

a name that isn’t just a cry,

it’s because she sat beside goodbye.

And stayed.

By Sinchana Srikanth Iyengar