perfection #

he was just a kid, fumbling his way through the fog,
grasping at things that never felt solid,
clinging to the cool kids like they held
some unspoken secret to being enough.
he lit his first cigarette, shaking,
coughed like hell but kept going,
because that’s what you did—
you burned yourself to belong.

there was a girl.
of course, there was a girl.
she didn’t care, not really,
but he chased her like she was oxygen.
and behind it all, quiet and waiting,
there was another—
the one who saw him,
really saw him,
but fuck that, right?
she wasn’t the kind of love
you wanted when you were trying to prove
you were worth something.

years passed, and he didn’t change.
still chasing, still losing himself,
drugs carving him hollow,
his body thinning,
his laugh turning sharp and bitter.
his friends—if you could call them that—
vanished, leaving echoes of their mockery.
and the girl?
the one he thought he loved?
she was with someone else,
her smile sharp as glass.

he hit rock bottom in an alley,
the kind of place that smells of piss and regret,
where you stop pretending you’re fine.
but then, out of nowhere,
a hand reached down—
not pity, but something close to grace.
a friend, a real one,
pulled him back from the edge,
gave him a bed,
a meal that wasn’t stolen or begged for,
and a sliver of hope.

he found himself in machines,
in code that made sense
when nothing else did.
the hum of circuits felt like home,
and slowly, piece by piece,
he built a life that didn’t feel like a lie.
people started to notice him,
started to care about the things he could create.
but the ghosts stayed,
whispering about everything he’d broken.

one day, he went looking for her—
the quiet girl, the one he’d ignored.
he found her, happy,
her life full in ways
he knew he’d never been part of.
he apologized,
but what do words fix
when the damage is already done?

he kept moving forward,
because what else was there to do?
but regret stayed,
a weight in his chest he couldn’t shake.
he wrote, he worked,
he gave what he could to the ones who stayed,
but it never felt like enough.

one night, on a bridge,
he let it all catch up to him.
the stars didn’t offer answers,
the water didn’t promise peace,
but the silence felt right.
he stepped onto a loose plank,
and the world gave way.

what he left behind wasn’t money or fame—
it was the love he’d tried to show,
however flawed and messy.
the people who’d saved him
carried pieces of him forward,
and the ones he’d hurt
remembered him for what he was:
not a villain, not a hero,
just a boy who got lost
and tried,
however late, to be found.