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.
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?