You ever notice how people talk about safety like it’s a place?

A room you can go to. A person you can stand behind. A harbor you can sail into when the storm gets too loud.

I used to believe that, you know.

That safety was something outside myself: something I had to find, someone I had to trust, somewhere I had to hide.

And for a long time, Muerte, that someone was you.

A face painted with sorrow, a voice soaked in loss, a soul so heavy it made me believe you could carry mine too.

But here’s the truth I was too scared to say out loud back then:

A harbor is only safe if it isn’t sinking.

You’ve spent so long lost in the weight of your own past, Muerte.

In Vida, in the ghosts of Mariachi legends and the legacy that clings to you like dust on old vinyl.

Every step you take still echoes with the story you can’t stop retelling.

“Once, there was a man who died and kept walking. Once, there was a love that he lost. Once, there was a destiny carved in bone.”

You’ve lived so long in once that you don’t see the now.

And that’s why you were a harbor that couldn’t hold me.

Because you can’t shelter someone when you’re still trying to resurrect every broken piece of yourself.

You kept searching for meaning in the ashes of people who are long gone.

And I kept waiting. Hoping that if I held my breath long enough, you’d finally look forward instead of down.

But you never did.

You can’t help it, Muerte. Your heart is a mausoleum. Everything that enters gets trapped with the rest of the dead.

But I’m not the girl who needed a harbor anymore.

I built my own harbor.

Brick by brick, scar by scar, truth by truth.

And from where I’m standing now, I can see you clearly for the first time.

You haven’t changed. You haven’t grown. You haven’t stepped out of the past long enough to realize the world moved on without you.

You fight like you’re trying to rewrite your story. I fight like I finally understand mine.

You drown in tradition while I learned to breathe.

You think I’m walking into your world this week. But you haven’t realized something important:

I don’t need your shore anymore.

Because safety was never going to come from you. It had to come from me.

And it did.

I’m no longer the girl clinging to the rail of a sinking harbor. I’m the woman who learned how to swim.

But you’re still there, Muerte, standing in the ruins of a story that ended a long time ago.

Calling it destiny. Calling it purpose. Calling it weight you have to carry.

But all you’re really doing is going under. One memory at a time. One ghost at a time.

And the truth you never wanted to see is the one I finally learned to accept.

You weren’t a harbor. You were the undertow.

And now that I’ve pulled myself free, you’re the only one drowning.