I count past ten though no one’s footsteps ever start,
A volunteer to absence, drafted quietly apart,
The room conspires with silence, every angle doing its part,
To prove invisibility is less a trick than it is art.
I learn the language of a game that no one plays,
Where time elongates strangely in unmeasured, vacant ways,
The air grows dense with all the words I never phrase,
And even echoes hesitate, then dissipate in haze.
I wait for chance disturbance—some misstep, some mistake,
A floorboard’s mild betrayal or a breath I didn’t fake,
But stillness holds its discipline; it will not even break,
As if neglect itself were something no one needs to make.
I trace the outline of myself against the wall,
A silhouette that flickers, half convinced it stands at all,
Each thought returns rehearsed, a well-acquainted call,
Insisting I am both the fault and architect of fall.
I inventory failures with a near-religious care,
Reciting them like scripture to a god that isn’t there,
Each memory revised to prove I’m less than what I wear,
Until the act of breathing feels like something I must spare.
I try to curate peace from fragments I can find,
Small architectures built from scraps of an unquiet mind,
But every structure lists, asymptotically misaligned,
As if contentment were a theorem I’ve misdefined.
I test the thought that maybe I could simply let things be,
Release the need for verdicts that keep sentencing me,
But doubt rehearses arguments with practiced fluency,
And every softer notion meets immediate scrutiny.
The dark becomes a habitat I no longer contest,
Its logic slow and patient, like a pulse beneath the chest,
I synchronize unwillingly, adopt it as a guest,
Then host it far too well until it names itself “rest.”
And yet beneath the weight of this compulsive, inward stare,
A question forms unbidden, fragile in the air,
If no one ever sought me, was I absent—or just there,
Misfiled within a game that never learned to care.
I’ll count one last time, though numbers blur and lose their former sense,
No seeker, no discovery, no rupture of suspense,
Just me, and all the versions I have tried and found too dense,
Still hiding in a place that never offered recompense.
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 8:12 AM UTC
I count past ten though no one’s footsteps ever start,
A volunteer to absence, drafted quietly apart,
The room conspires with silence, every angle doing its part,
To prove invisibility is less a trick than it is art.
I learn the language of a game that no one plays,
Where time elongates strangely in unmeasured, vacant ways,
The air grows dense with all the words I never phrase,
And even echoes hesitate, then dissipate in haze.
I wait for chance disturbance—some misstep, some mistake,
A floorboard’s mild betrayal or a breath I didn’t fake,
But stillness holds its discipline; it will not even break,
As if neglect itself were something no one needs to make.
I trace the outline of myself against the wall,
A silhouette that flickers, half convinced it stands at all,
Each thought returns rehearsed, a well-acquainted call,
Insisting I am both the fault and architect of fall.
I inventory failures with a near-religious care,
Reciting them like scripture to a god that isn’t there,
Each memory revised to prove I’m less than what I wear,
Until the act of breathing feels like something I must spare.
I try to curate peace from fragments I can find,
Small architectures built from scraps of an unquiet mind,
But every structure lists, asymptotically misaligned,
As if contentment were a theorem I’ve misdefined.
I test the thought that maybe I could simply let things be,
Release the need for verdicts that keep sentencing me,
But doubt rehearses arguments with practiced fluency,
And every softer notion meets immediate scrutiny.
The dark becomes a habitat I no longer contest,
Its logic slow and patient, like a pulse beneath the chest,
I synchronize unwillingly, adopt it as a guest,
Then host it far too well until it names itself “rest.”
And yet beneath the weight of this compulsive, inward stare,
A question forms unbidden, fragile in the air,
If no one ever sought me, was I absent—or just there,
Misfiled within a game that never learned to care.
I’ll count one last time, though numbers blur and lose their former sense,
No seeker, no discovery, no rupture of suspense,
Just me, and all the versions I have tried and found too dense,
Still hiding in a place that never offered recompense.