Life doesn’t hand you a map.
It hands you cracks in the floor,
shadows in hallways,
the echo of absence.
Some people leave
before you understand
what it means to need them.
Love and stability
become luxuries,
distant myths.
Survival is the only lesson
you can count on.
Sometimes the price of learning it
is walking a path
that feels darker
than the world intends.
Poem by J.L