the world sounds like a train station at rush hour,
like voices layered thick as the steam that once rose from the engines,
all of them talking, talking—
parents, teachers, lovers, ghosts,
therapists with soft hands and tired eyes,
children with too much sugar and not enough sleep,
the man at the bus stop swearing at his shoelace,
the woman in the checkout line whispering to herself
about the price of milk and memory.

everything hums, everything aches.

i hear the couple in the apartment next door,
arguing in low, sharp murmurs,
then falling silent—
a different kind of violence.
i hear the late-night sirens slicing through sleep,
the way the city coughs up its trouble
and swallows it again before dawn.

somewhere, a student scratches answers onto a test,
a teacher sighs into her coffee,
a cashier forces a smile so rehearsed it has lost all meaning.
somewhere, a father tells his son to stop crying,
a girl laughs too loud so no one notices she is alone,
a poet stares at a blank page and calls it art.

the world is a choir of voices that don’t know they are singing,
a symphony of car horns and apologies,
of breakups and reconciliations,
of doors slamming and doors opening,
of someone’s grief sitting heavy in their chest,
and someone else’s joy spilling like sunlight across the floor.

i hear it all—
the hushed phone calls from hospital rooms,
the quiet sobs in bathroom stalls,
the unspoken things lodged in people’s throats.
but most of all, i hear their emptiness.

it is the hollow sound of footsteps in an empty house,
the silence between two people who used to be everything,
the way a person says “I’m fine” like they’re trying to convince themselves.
it is the spaces between words,
the long pauses where a confession should be,
the weight of days that feel like echoes of nothing.

but also—
the soft laughter of old friends at midnight,
the way a child’s voice lifts like a paper boat on a stream,
the sound of someone you love saying your name
like it’s a song they’ve always known.

the world sounds like everything,
all at once, all the time.
it is loud, it is relentless,
but listen long enough,
and sometimes—
it sounds like music.