today feels heavy
like the air learned how to sit on my chest
and decided to stay there
the world feels heavier than it needs to be
and my hands
they are not built for this kind of carrying
there is a phrase
that keeps showing up everywhere
like it belongs in polite conversation
like it is normal
like it is not a wound disguised as language
as if living is a product
as if it comes with instructions
and a receipt
and a breakdown of charges at the bottom
and I keep thinking about that word
cost
how easily it slides into sentences
how no one flinches when they say it
I pay to exist in walls
I pay to open my eyes in the morning
I pay to be warm
to be fed
to be clean enough to be allowed near other people
I pay to work
which is the part that never stops feeling like a joke told too quietly
I pay to see the people I love
I pay to move through time without falling apart
everything has a price tag
even the things that were never supposed to be for sale
and still
we call it normal
like it is not strange
that breathing has been turned into a subscription model
like it is not absurd
that survival arrives itemised
and I keep asking myself
what kind of world teaches people to accept this without shaking
because it starts to feel like a curse
a quiet one
passed down through every invoice
every rent reminder
every receipt that feels too long for what was bought
and somewhere in all of that
there are people counting coins for bread
fingers cold
hope smaller every time it is folded into change
and there are others
who do not even see the counting
because they are too far above the ground where it happens
and I cannot hold both truths without splitting
for some to have everything
something somewhere has to be taken
quietly
consistently
until it looks like normal life
and it does look like normal life
that is the worst part
we are not collapsing all at once
we are dissolving slowly
in budgets and bills and shifts that stretch too long
in meals skipped without drama
in bodies that learn to ignore hunger
we are dying
not loudly
but economically
which somehow makes it easier to ignore
and I think about time
how it is the only thing not directly billed
and yet it still gets taken
in hours worked
in energy drained
in years that blur into recovery from the years before
time is not free
it just has a different collector
and then the thought that keeps returning
like a door that will not stay closed
what happens when the cost of staying alive
becomes higher than what a person is allowed to earn
what happens when a job can replace you faster
than it can explain to your family
why you could not afford to remain here
and I do not have a clean answer for that
only the shape of it
only the silence it leaves behind
because something in me refuses to accept
that this is simply how things are supposed to be
and maybe that refusal
is the only thing still intact
not hope in a soft sense
not optimism dressed up as comfort
the awareness that this is constructed
and anything constructed
can be rebuilt
even if the people who benefit from it
keep insisting it is gravity
and I am still here inside it
still noticing
still naming it
still unwilling to pretend it is natural
and if that is all I can do right now
then it is still something
because I do not want to learn how to survive quietly in a system that mistakes exhaustion for normality
I want to learn how to look at it
fully
and not look away
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