I have lived at the edges of myself,
where storms meet silence,
where the pendulum swings
between too much and not enough
never finding that gentle place
they call center.

My body remembers every earthquake,
every sudden drop,
every moment I was too small
or too loud for this world.
Now it flinches at stillness,
searches for familiar chaos
in the quiet of ordinary days.

I take my vitamins,
count my steps like rosary beads,
measure sleep in careful hours,
eat the colors that promise healing
but my nervous system
still hums with ancient alarms,
still mistakes peace
for the eye of a storm.

What is normal
when you've been stretched
between breaking points?
When calm feels like waiting
for the other shoe to drop?
When your body speaks a language
of hypervigilance
that no amount of green tea
can translate back to rest?

Some days I am a tightrope walker
on a wire made of breath,
balancing between
the exhaustion of too much feeling
and the hollow ache
of feeling nothing at all.

Wind lifts the sea like sheets from a bed,
the sky turns a soft bruise, grey and purple,
gulls fold into commas above the water,
and the first whitecaps practice saying my name.

The storm begins to tune its instruments,
a low drum under my ribs, a snare in the dune grass,
rain smells like iron and new linen,
clean and exact, as if the day can be washed.

Noise becomes a blanket.
It wipes the fingerprints of everything I could not fix,
it drowns the rooms that echo,
it teaches my breath to move like tide, in and out.

Lightning writes brief, honest sentences,
thunder answers with a simple yes,
and in that loud grammar I finally hear quiet,
the kind that makes room for a person to exist.

I sit still and let the weather keep me,
salt on my lips, cold on my wrists,
the world is busy and I do not have to be,
I only have to listen while the water kneels and rises.

Each day, I awaken
as someone I do not recall
yesterday’s self dissolves
like salt in rainwater,
leaving only a faint outline
I cannot name.

I watch feelings and faces
rise and vanish,
a reel of strangers
moving through me
voices shifting in pitch,
hopes changing color,
beliefs melting into questions
before they find a shape.

My heart is a hall of mirrors
where nothing stays still,
reflections sliding past
before I can greet them.
I reach inward
but my hands pass through mist
whoever I was is already gone,
whoever I am is still becoming.

There is a deep confusion,
a constant turning
emotions swirl,
names and needs blur,
each new day a new mask
that fits just for a moment
before falling away.

How can I explain the ache
of never arriving
of always searching the crowd inside
for the one true face,
yet only finding
a thousand shifting shadows
dancing out of reach?

There are days when I wake up
and the blueprint of my life
has redrawn itself overnight,
walls I thought were solid
turning to mist, doors gone missing,
the rooms I once called mine
now echo with questions,
my hands tired from trying to build
and rebuild a future out of shifting ground.

I keep searching for a foundation
that won’t crack beneath my feet,
somewhere I can set down
my dreams and know they’ll stay
but the map keeps folding itself
in new directions, every corner
asking me to become someone new.

It’s exhausting to keep losing
what I’ve barely begun to love,
to watch the colors I painted fade
before I can step back and call it home.
Sometimes all I want is a quiet space
where nothing needs to change,
where I can let time gather
like soft dust on windowsills,
proving that I was here, that something stayed.

Maybe someday, the blueprints
will settle and let me rest,
letting me believe in forever,
even if only for a little while
I hold hope
like a hidden key in my pocket,
and keep building, even as the ground moves,
knowing that what I truly long for
might be the most human thing of all.

Every day I wake with a question inside,
drifting between mirrors,
searching for the face behind the fog
who am I,
who am I becoming,
where will my wandering take me?

I carry an ancient ache,
wisdom worn smooth by lifetimes
hidden beneath my skin,
yet inside my chest a child still clings
to simple joys, old wounds,
and the trembling hush of being seen.

There’s a fracture I trace with gentle fingers,
lines of distortion only I can feel,
shapes and shadows swirling
where sense and sensation refuse to meet.
Sometimes, a thing will turn my stomach
I recoil,
not from logic
but from something wordless,
old as fear.

It’s strange to hold so much knowing
and so much confusion
in the same gentle hands.
Strange to despise what reason allows,
to stand at the crossroads of intuition and thought,
lost in the silent argument between them.

Still, I keep walking,
willing to meet the parts of myself
that make no sense at all
letting questions bloom like wildflowers
in the fields between
who I was
and who I might yet become.

I remember laying on the cold earth as a child,
watching a sky heavy with secrets,
when the first snow flurry brushed my cheek
a hush so soft I could have drifted away,
wrapped warm in my jacket,
the world outside fading
until only comfort remained.

At my grandparents’ house,
sunlight spilled across the kitchen floor in the morning,
and my grandmother’s sandwiches arrived like small miracles,
each bite a kind of promise
that the world was gentle here.
Every hug with them was an anchor,
every moment of excitement a burst of belonging
my heart at ease, my nervous system quietly humming
in the certainty of love.

But it was France,
in a tucked-away little room on the first floor of a strange house,
where I discovered what peace could feel like
for my body and soul.
There, the bed waited beneath white curtains,
the windows open to a gentle wind
that made the curtains dance,
soft as dreams.
I lay down, weightless,
a soft blanket pulled to my chin,
and drifted into the kind of nap
where anything felt possible
the world stilled, my mind a blank canvas,
filled only by the magic of being safe.

Now I understand
Peace is more than memory,
it’s the calm that fills my chest when the world is gentle,
the ease that settles in my bones,
the safety that softens every breath.
It’s a nervous system at rest,
a body unburdened,
a quiet mind that finally trusts where it is.

Wherever I find this stillness
in winter’s hush,
in sunlit kitchens,
in the sway of white curtains,
I know I am home.
Peace lives inside me now,
teaching me that calm and safety are not places,
but a way my whole self can feel
when I let the world be soft
and trust that I am safe.

All night, the brushes bristle
with unsteady prayers,
oil and terror in every sweep,
each canvas a battlefield
between memory and madness,
between longing and loss.

He paints in fever,
his trembling hand chasing ghosts
across gessoed plains,
trying to mend the world
with color and chaos
a smudge for each regret,
a highlight for every hope
he’s drowned in turpentine.

The house groans and blurs
behind him,
rooms melting into each other
like faces on the page,
shapes that won’t hold still,
voices splintering in the walls
they whisper, paint,
paint,
paint,
until there is nothing left
but cracked varnish
and the echo of “almost.”

He paints what he lost:
her laughter in morning light,
the gentle reach of hands
he can’t recall in detail
only the ache,
the hollow,
the unfinished lines
he keeps returning to.

Perfection dangles, just out of reach,
each stroke carving him hollow
as his world frays at the edges
canvas peeling back
to reveal the wound
he cannot heal.

He whispers to the silence,
to the shadows gathering thick as oil
Finish it for me.
His plea stains the air,
weightless as dust,
hoping someone
even in the next room,
or the next life
will take the brush
and find the shape
of what he could not complete.

In the end,
he paints and paints,
chasing the ghost of a masterpiece,
painting himself out of the world,
leaving behind
one trembling signature,
unfinished
waiting
for a gentler hand
to finish it for him.