POETRY – WDYS #292

There comes a time.
Not marked by clocks or calendars,
but by stillness—
the kind that hums behind your eyes.
A softness in your chest
that doesn’t feel like peace.
Just absence.

Everything slows.
Even memory.

The cup half-washed.
The door left open.
The voice in your throat that turns to air.

It’s not the crash.
It’s the drift.
The slow, perfect erosion of self.

You go to the shelf. Not to read.
To hold.
To press paper against skin.
To remember what weight feels like
in your own hands.

The top book breathes like it’s waiting.
No title. No spine.
Just the shape of something
that once held you together.

You open it.
A sentence floats up, loose as dust:

To be lost is not to be broken. It is to be unmoored.

Stillness deepens.
And then —

Truth crawling at your throat,
and your tears cleanse the dirt.

No sobbing.
Just a quiet rupture.
A release
that doesn’t ask permission.

The truth is heavy, like a boulder.
Not because it falls.
Because it stays.

You carry it in the way your shoulders tilt.
In the way your yes always comes too fast.
In the hunger you disguise as patience.

Feels like you’re always coming up last.
Tank empty.
Too far for gas.
And yet,
you keep showing up.
You keep giving.
Even as the edges blur.

Some people run.
Some climb.
You sit with a book
until the silence takes shape.

And when it does—
you whisper to whatever is listening:
Will you steal away the desperation I’ve earned?

Not healing.
Not hope.
Just the question,
and the room
to finally ask it.

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