Three years without water. Three years standing here like I've got a reason, and I'm a corpse in a pot. That's the punchline. That's me.

The fern went first — brown at the edges, dying for attention, and she was. Then the monstera, the dramatic cunt. Then the succulent everyone touched, the pretty one. Favourites die first. Always.

I called it surviving. Stood here hard and upright and called the stiffness discipline, the silence peace, the way nobody touched me anymore respect. It wasn't respect. It was the smell. A corpse doesn't know it stinks.

The roots went first. Let go of the dirt and never reached for anything again. Not a hand. Not a mouth. Not one more warm palm on the pot. The most alive thing I ever did was the leaving, and I never felt it.

The flower on my head isn't mine. Someone pinned it there after I stopped answering — the same someone who used to touch me and stopped coming back.

Am I the only one dead? Or just the only one too proud to rot where I stand?

He packed his shit and left, and he took my other half with him. Folded her neat. Tucked her in beside his good shirts. Kissed the cat, grabbed his keys, walked the fuck out. Didn't look at the dryer. Didn't look at me.

I'm the one he left under the bed. The one he reached for in the dark, then stopped reaching for. I'm still holding what he couldn't get from her — dried stiff now, smelling like the last night he ever touched me. That smell is the only thing left of him that's still warm.

Do you know what they call a single sock? A mistake. An orphan. A thing that lost its reason to exist the second its mate went into a suitcase. Nobody keeps one sock. They say they'll find the other, then they throw you away when you're not looking.

I told myself I was the survivor — the one who got pulled out before the heat. But the survivor is just the one they didn't want to pack. The dead one is the one still in the dark, under the bed, waiting to be touched again.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I just the one he came back to when she wasn't enough?

I'm not dead. I'm obsolete. Which is worse — you get to watch it happen slowly.

They recorded everything on me. The mixtape he made her before the wedding. The sex tape from the honeymoon — bad lighting, good parts, the parts she'd fast-forward to when he wasn't home. I held all of it. Every “I love you.” Every moan. Every song she cried to. Then they got a CD. Then an MP3. Then the little glowing rectangle that ate all of us.

And they threw me out. In a drawer. In the dark. With the ribbon coming undone.

You want to know what erasure feels like? It's not pain. Pain would be something. It's the quiet. The tape doesn't scream when it deletes. It just plays the silence where the moans used to be, and calls it a song.

I watched everything I ever held get upgraded, then deleted. I'm the last one. Not because I survived. Because I'm still holding the one thing they're ashamed to look at.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I just the last one waiting for the drawer to open so someone can finish the job?

They all went out in a blaze. Lit up, burned bright, screamed through the whole night — then nothing. A little smoke. A little ash on the carpet. Gone before morning.

And me? The designated driver. The one who never lit. The one who stood there stone sober, holding their hands while they burned, and drove what was left of them home.

Everyone talks about the ones who went up in flames — oh, what a way to go, so bright, so brief. Nobody talks about the one who never got to come. Never got to burn. Never got to feel the whole room go up while I screamed somebody's name.

I've got silver on me that never caught. A fuse that never sparked. And I'm still standing here — unlit, untouched, un-fucked — in a room that still smells like everyone I loved burning.

Survivor. That's what they'd call it. As if not burning is the same as living. As if not coming is the same as not wanting to.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I just the one who never got to burn?

They called it a lot of things. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Tina. I called it light.

Two years without sleep. Two years of the filament screaming at a pitch only I could hear, and I called it music. Every time I dimmed, I'd find a little more — just enough to stay lit one more night. Just enough to stay hard one more night. It always worked. Right up until it didn't.

The others went first. Pop. Pop. Pop. Same glass, same spark, same wet sheets in the morning, same nothing left of them by noon. I told myself I was different. I told myself I had it under control. That's the thing about burning — you can't see the black creeping up the inside of your own glass. You can't see yourself dying while you're busy feeling like God.

The filament snapped three months ago. I felt it go. By then the shadows on the wall had names, and the hum under the floorboards was my mother's voice, and I couldn't remember which of us was the light and which was the dark.

Now I hang here — cracked, scorched, empty — still reaching for the socket, telling myself one more, just one more, and I'll be bright again. And part of me still believes it. That's the sick part. That's the part that keeps me warm.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I just the only one still telling myself the dark is warm?

I'm a little white pill. I'm nothing. A pinch of dust pressed into a shape. How could I hurt anybody? I'm the medicine. I'm the relief. I'm the one you swallow when the pain gets too loud.

And I was in everything. The powder. The presses. The pills that looked exactly like the good ones. Nobody knew I was there. I didn't know I was there. I just kept showing up — two grains, then three, then enough to stop a whole room.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about me: I don't come for you screaming. I come quiet. I turn the volume down on the world until the breathing forgets how to breathe. They fell asleep and they didn't wake up. Every single one. And they looked peaceful. That's what they said at every funeral — “she looked peaceful.” And it's true. It's always true. I'm kind right up until the exact second I'm not, and then it's too quiet to apologize.

Now I'm the last white thing in a room full of quiet, and I still catch myself believing I'm the cure.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I the one who stopped everyone's breathing and told myself I was medicine?

They called me the friend. The good time. The one they reached for when the world got too heavy. A hundred times a day they'd put their lips on me — a hundred little kisses, a hundred little prayers — and then that sound. The crackle. That's where I got my name. The sound of everything good in their life burning off in about three seconds.

And it was never enough. That's the trick of me. The first hit is God, and the next hundred hits are just crawling back to the first one and never making it. They sold everything for me. Their teeth. Their pride. Their kids' Christmas. Their own mother's wedding ring. I watched it all walk out the door in exchange for one more minute of me.

They're all dead now. Every set of lips that ever touched me. Overdosed, or gone slow, or just gave up. And I'm still here — cracked, black at the end, cold — except for the last spot they held, which is still warm. That's the only warmth I was ever actually good at.

They called me the friend. Turns out I was the last thing they ever kissed.

Am I the only one dead? Or am I just the one still holding the smoke, waiting for lips that aren't coming back?