They didn’t steal your life They just made it impossible To leave it intact One click That’s all it ever is Not violence Not force Just permission you didn’t read Giving birth to the loss And you signed it Don’t flinch Don’t soften it You signed it in motion In fatigue in “Later I’ll get to it” Which is just consent in disguise For the exhausted spirit Now it renews you Like a subscription Like a wound that Re-ups itself monthly I didn’t get taken I kept going That’s the part That stays quiet Still growing Not hands on me Not force Not chain Just me returning Again to the same I press “continue” Like it’s breath in bone Like I don’t know how to leave it alone The door isn’t locked It just learns my name And opens before I even aim They don’t chain you Chains imply contact They engineer a life Where leaving feels like friction And friction feels like failure And failure feels like you So who’s the author of this consent Me in the moment I wasn’t present Me in the pause between Want and need Where tired becomes a kind of creed It doesn’t seize me It lets me slide Lets me call it “choice” While I stay inside And every cycle I swear I’ll break But breaking costs more than I can take So I stay I stay I stay In the loop Not caught in a net but caught In a groove Not forced down low but lowered slow Like gravity learned my name to know They built it soft enough that you defend it That’s the genius That’s the violence with clean hands No guards No gates Just interfaces that never end Scroll tap agree repeat A liturgy for the distracted Meat of attention And I hate that I understand it clean How surrender feels like something I mean How the mind can bend to reduce the strain And call that bending a form of gain I didn’t lose I maintained the pace Kept my own hand on my own erase Kept signing where no one made me sign Just followed the line that felt like mine You think you’re deciding Cute And that’s the cut that doesn’t heal right No enemy here Just internal night Don’t clean it up with “It’s just business” That phrase is anesthesia For moral numbness No thief in the room No breach no raid Just me agreeing to the bed I made And I can feel it before I speak The soft decay of a practiced weak Not broken loud Not shattered wrong Just worn down smooth From going on The system didn’t need to persuade It only needed the habits I made Each “later” each “not now” each delay A brick I laid In a wall I’d stay So when I reach for The exit line It doesn’t resist It rewrites mine Turns leaving into a sequence long So I abandon before it’s wrong And I call that normal I call that fine I call it “I’ll deal with it next time” But “next time” is just the same return To the same small fire I let burn I am not held I am repetition A loop that learned its own condition A hand that keeps feeding the same demand Then wonders why it won’t unclamp And the truth is sharp in a private place I don’t escape it I keep its pace Because something In me prefers the known Over the weight of stepping unknown So don’t give me villains Don’t give me blame I already know Where the pulse got trained I already know How the pattern wins It starts in me Before it begins And still I click And still I stay And still I call it another day Not trapped outside Not forced from above But folded inward into What I love And that’s the part that actually hurts Not what they do But how I convert How I turn friction into refrain And call that comfort What should be pain Because I don’t leave I just renew ~by Unreadhyperion
