She notices the silence before I do-
the way I slip
between seconds,
unreachable.
My name falls from her lips
like a stone into a well.
No echo comes back.
“Are you here?” she asks,
as if I might have already left
my body behind.
“I’m fine,” I almost say-
but the word rots in my throat,
so I nod instead,
a puppet with cut strings.
And then I’m gone again.
Not asleep.
Not dreaming.
Just buried-
under the weight of my own mind,
where thoughts don’t speak,
they suffocate.
She calls me back once more,
gentler this time,
like you would wake something fragile
or dangerous.
“Did something happen?”
Everything did.
Nothing did.
I smile.
The kind of smile
that feels like cracking glass.
I sit so still
even time seems uncomfortable around me.
The air thickens.
People notice.
“What’s wrong with you?”
someone whispers beside me,
like I’ve become a problem to solve.
“Nothing.”
The easiest lie.
The heaviest one.
“Yeah,” she says,
“I can see that-
nothing’s wrong,
but you look like you’re disappearing.”
The teacher’s voice cuts through-
clinical, distant:
“Are you feeling sick?
Do you need to leave?”
If only it were that simple.
I smile again.
My face performs.
My eyes betray everything.
I can feel her searching for me
inside my own face-
so I look back.
And for a second,
I wonder if she sees it:
the hollow,
the static,
the quiet collapse.
I don’t speak again.
I just sit-
a body in a chair,
a mind in ruins,
staring at nothing
like it might stare back.
At the end,
she asks about next week-
tests, understanding,
the future.
As if I’m still part of it.
“Mhm,” I mumble,
a ghost agreeing to exist.
And then I leave-
or maybe
I was never really there.
Mar 18
Mar 18, 2026 at 2:32 PM UTC
She notices the silence before I do-
the way I slip
between seconds,
unreachable.
My name falls from her lips
like a stone into a well.
No echo comes back.
“Are you here?” she asks,
as if I might have already left
my body behind.
“I’m fine,” I almost say-
but the word rots in my throat,
so I nod instead,
a puppet with cut strings.
And then I’m gone again.
Not asleep.
Not dreaming.
Just buried-
under the weight of my own mind,
where thoughts don’t speak,
they suffocate.
She calls me back once more,
gentler this time,
like you would wake something fragile
or dangerous.
“Did something happen?”
Everything did.
Nothing did.
I smile.
The kind of smile
that feels like cracking glass.
I sit so still
even time seems uncomfortable around me.
The air thickens.
People notice.
“What’s wrong with you?”
someone whispers beside me,
like I’ve become a problem to solve.
“Nothing.”
The easiest lie.
The heaviest one.
“Yeah,” she says,
“I can see that-
nothing’s wrong,
but you look like you’re disappearing.”
The teacher’s voice cuts through-
clinical, distant:
“Are you feeling sick?
Do you need to leave?”
If only it were that simple.
I smile again.
My face performs.
My eyes betray everything.
I can feel her searching for me
inside my own face-
so I look back.
And for a second,
I wonder if she sees it:
the hollow,
the static,
the quiet collapse.
I don’t speak again.
I just sit-
a body in a chair,
a mind in ruins,
staring at nothing
like it might stare back.
At the end,
she asks about next week-
tests, understanding,
the future.
As if I’m still part of it.
“Mhm,” I mumble,
a ghost agreeing to exist.
And then I leave-
or maybe
I was never really there.