The Silence that Lives Inside

Some days, it feels like i’m drowning in air, 

the kind of breath that scrapes your lungs raw,  

and i wonder if i’ll ever remember how it felt 

to be anything other than tired of existing. 

i see people move through life like it’s easy, 

like there’s a script i never learned,  

and i’m a spectator in my own skin, 

watching my hands go through motions 

i don’t feel, saying words i barely hear. 
 

they think they know me— 

they don’t see the hollow inside, 

the parts of me that feel unfinished, 

the places where i keep my distance, 

where i smile, nod, say the right things, 

and none of it reaches the ache underneath. 

there’s a darkness so sharp it’s nauseating, 

a noise in my head like static, like screaming, 

like everything inside wants to claw its way out, 

and i am quiet, always quiet, 

while the pain drowns me in silence. 

i don’t know how to touch happiness anymore, 

or even sorrow, not the real kind, 

just this numb ache, this emptiness 

where i should feel something, anything— 

but it’s all lost, slipping through fingers 

i barely believe are mine. 

sometimes i wonder if i’m a person at all 

or just a cracked shell pretending,  

and it hurts, god, it hurts, 

because i am so close to everyone 

and yet a thousand miles from myself,  

no warmth, no sympathy, no empathy, 

just this empty performance 

that i can’t remember how to stop. 

and no one sees it—the way i’m slipping, 

how existing feels like a weight i can’t carry, 

how every day tastes a little more bitter, 

how every hour feels just a little further 

from where i thought life would be. 

i am here but i’m not here, 

a shadow with a voice, a ghost with hands, 

and i wonder if anyone could ever 

look past the mask long enough 

to see the silence tearing me apart 

from the inside out.