You Live My Life
You wake up in the city I painted my maps with when my room smelled like peeling paint
You drink coffee on balconies I sketched in notebooks while my parents fought and never healed
You send pictures from trains, from airports
from bars that still feel like gold compared to the stain I breathe
I watch from a couch that remembers every night I swore I would leave.
We sat side by side in that cracked classroom
same lecture, same buzz, same lack of sleep
I talked about records and books and van tours
you talked about keeping rent cheap
Now you throw your keys on granite counters in some new glass tower I once described down to the tiles
You send a “you’d love it here” message like a knife that smiles.
Every path I mapped, you walk, Every dream I sang
you talk
Like the universe swapped our hands And never fixed the shock.
You live my life while I rot in the draft
Every wish I whispered landed in your lap
If envy is ugly, get a good look at this stare
I am stuck in the world that should have been mine
You sail through the one I prepared.
When the job hit your inbox
you called asking if you should take it
I gave you the breakdown: pay, perks, exit routes
every angle I could make it
You worried about missing old friends while I pushed you forward with a shaking voice
Then stayed behind, drinking tap water
tasting every inch of that choice.
Part of me wants you to fail, crash hard, fall back
admit the climb was mine
Part of me knows the only reason you made it is you moved while I sat drawing exit signs
I hate what you have and hate that you actually reached for it when I stayed afraid
I hate that this envy holds more heat Than any love I ever built.
You live my life while I rot in the draft
Every wish I whispered landed in your lap
If envy is ugly, get a good look at this stare
I am stuck in the world that should have been mine
You sail through the one I prepared.
One day I might move
steal one scene back from this terrible misprint
Until then
every photo you send Writes my ghosts In your frames.