Maybe I am alone. Maybe that’s okay. Until— . . . it isn’t.
When the loneliness presses down, heavier than a stone I never chose to carry, when it drapes itself over me like a blanket I can’t shake off, when silence hums louder than any song I’ve ever known—
when smoke curls through my chest, burning pathways into lungs that only wanted air, when every inhale feels borrowed, and every exhale feels like surrender—
when I dream too much and live too little, when the world outside my window keeps spinning without me, while I sit, stuck inside the stillness of my own mind.
When my chest tightens like a fist around my ribs, and suddenly I can’t breathe— like the air itself is leaving me behind.
When I speak to the walls just to hear a sound, but even the echo refuses me. When I clutch my pillow at night as if its cotton filling could ever replace a heartbeat.
When I invent a lover with gentle hands, a friend with listening eyes, people made of smoke and memory, who vanish when the morning light comes in.
When I stare too long in the mirror and watch my reflection blur, as if the glass itself is tired of holding me together.
What then?
Do I wait for the ache to soften, for the night to forgive me, for the weight to lift on its own? Do I fold myself into the quiet and call it survival? Or do I keep asking questions to an empty room, hoping someday, the silence will answer back?
