The forest swallowed the sky days ago. Or maybe that was weeks. Time here doesn’t tick—it drips.

I eat things that don’t have names. They writhe. Sometimes they stare back.

Something is following me. It doesn’t breathe. It doesn’t need to. I tried to hide once— it laughed, but nothing moved its face.

My fingernails are gone. I scratched too hard at the earth trying to dig somewhere safer. There is no down. Only more of it.

My voice is gone. It left when I screamed too long and nothing answered but the trees, leaning in like listeners, hungry for sound.

I don’t sleep. If I do, it speaks. Not in words. In heat behind my eyes. In dreams I didn’t have.

I should be dead. I tried. But it won’t let me.

Something wants me alive. Not to save. To watch.