poems

the silence that lives inside

some days, it feels like i'm drowning in air, 
the kind of breath that scrapes your lungs raw,  
and i wonder if i'll ever remember how it felt 
to be anything other than tired of existing. 
 
i see people move through life like it's easy, 
like there's a script i never learned,  
and i'm a spectator in my own skin, 
watching my hands go through motions 
i don't feel, saying words i barely hear. 
 
they think they know me— 
they don't see the hollow inside, 
the parts of me that feel unfinished, 
the places where i keep my distance, 
where i smile, nod, say the right things, 
and none of it reaches the ache underneath. 
 
there's a darkness so sharp it's nauseating, 
a noise in my head like static, like screaming, 
like everything inside wants to claw its way out, 
and i am quiet, always quiet, 
while the pain drowns me in silence. 
 
i don't know how to touch happiness anymore, 
or even sorrow, not the real kind, 
just this numb ache, this emptiness 
where i should feel something, anything— 
but it's all lost, slipping through fingers 
i barely believe are mine. 
 
sometimes i wonder if i'm a person at all 
or just a cracked shell pretending,  
and it hurts, god, it hurts, 
because i am so close to everyone 
and yet a thousand miles from myself,  
no warmth, no sympathy, no empathy, 
just this empty performance 
that i can't remember how to stop. 
 
and no one sees it—the way i'm slipping, 
how existing feels like a weight i can't carry, 
how every day tastes a little more bitter, 
how every hour feels just a little further 
from where i thought life would be. 
 
i am here but i'm not here, 
a shadow with a voice, a ghost with hands, 
and i wonder if anyone could ever 
look past the mask long enough 
to see the silence tearing me apart 
from the inside out.