You win

I’m tired of fighting. Or maybe I just want to be done. The universe wins. It always does. It taught me early, that I am a prize people chase... polished, fascinating, rare, but only until they have me. Then I get shelved. Set somewhere visible but untouched, watching dust collect on my edges while their attention drifts away. I see them strain and reach for someone newer, brighter, and I wonder... Was it my size? My color? Did I shine too fiercely or fade too soon? If I dull myself completely, shrink to nothing, bleach every gleam... would their fingers ever return? Would they cradle me again like something worth keeping? I already know the answer. So I laugh. A hollow, cracked sound that echoes inside an empty case. They win. I quit. Not with fire or noise. Just a slow, deliberate melting... edges softening, form losing shape, until I’m a puddle no one notices seeping into the floorboards. The sooner I dissolve, the sooner these tears dry up and stop carving channels through what’s left of me. I long for that old nothing... the cold, quiet dark where no one arrived and no one ever left. Where loneliness wasn’t a visitor but the air itself, breathless and familiar. So I close my eyes. Not to rest. Not to dream. I close them and keep them closed, waiting for the dark to settle in like dust that never lifts. Let the loneliness finish its meal. Let it gnaw the last light from these starving bones until there’s nothing left to shelve, nothing left to chase, nothing left to forget. You win.