Hello Poetry
Submit your work and get some sparkles! Create free account
No_wordPoems
VIII. The Breakdown It is not sudden. The engine hesitates once, then again— as if something inside it has begun to question the distance. She notices before it fails. A change in the rhythm, a fracture in the steady hum she had trusted without thinking. The car slows. Not by choice. The road continues ahead, unchanged, unconcerned. She pulls to the side where the darkness gathers more completely. For a moment, the engine tries— then stops. Silence does not arrive all at once. It settles in layers, filling the space the motion leaves behind. Her hands remain on the wheel, as if the act of holding might return something that has already gone. There is no one to call out to. No passing light lingers long enough to notice. The road does not ask why she has stopped. It does not turn back. It carries others forward without pause, without memory. She sits in the absence of movement, feeling, for the first time, the full weight of where she is. Not lost. Not found. Just here— in a place the road brought her to and left her in. The night remains as it was. Only now she cannot move through it. #thought
0
Mar 17
Mar 17, 2026 at 7:31 AM UTC
The Roads She Never Chose
VIII. The Breakdown It is not sudden. The engine hesitates once, then again— as if something inside it has begun to question the distance. She notices before it fails. A change in the rhythm, a fracture in the steady hum she had trusted without thinking. The car slows. Not by choice. The road continues ahead, unchanged, unconcerned. She pulls to the side where the darkness gathers more completely. For a moment, the engine tries— then stops. Silence does not arrive all at once. It settles in layers, filling the space the motion leaves behind. Her hands remain on the wheel, as if the act of holding might return something that has already gone. There is no one to call out to. No passing light lingers long enough to notice. The road does not ask why she has stopped. It does not turn back. It carries others forward without pause, without memory. She sits in the absence of movement, feeling, for the first time, the full weight of where she is. Not lost. Not found. Just here— in a place the road brought her to and left her in. The night remains as it was. Only now she cannot move through it. #thought
No_word
Written by
No_word
25/M/In Observation
Mar 17
Mar 17, 2026 at 7:31 AM UTC
Request permission to use this poem