When the Light Turns Off

Regression in Healing

I couldn’t sleep.
The night hummed with a sound I couldn’t trace.
A buzz that lived in the shadows—
silent when light approached,
louder when I turned away.

I listened.
Not for answers—just to survive the hour.
It sounded like a wing,
like a June bug brushing memory,
like something begging to be noticed.

I reached for false comfort—
that ache I’ve known since twelve.
But my hands stilled.
My body is a temple.
Not a tomb for shame.
Not a stage for counterfeit peace.

I sat in the ache and let it pass.

—

I woke up tired.
Tried to rinse the heaviness off in the shower.
Tried to drown the buzz with job applications—
sixty-five planted seeds in dry ground.
One small sprout—maybe.
I told my family.
But hope turned into heat,
misunderstanding into missiles.
It always does.

—

I don’t want to be
the 20-something who’s jobless.
I don’t want to be
the 20-something who’s loveless.
I don’t want to be
the 20-something who feels like too much and not enough
in the same breath.

I just want to be seen.
To be heard.
To be held.

—

But until then,
I plant another seed—
in soil no one else sees.
And I wait for the buzzing to stop.
Or maybe—
I learn to bloom beside it.

-The Soft Witness