anxiety, but silence.

We're all faces in a crowd,

silent under too much sound.

Hearts beat in half-steps,

scraping against each other like sandpaper,

strangers sharing breaths

that mean nothing until they mean everything.

we rush to forget

the bruises we collect in silence

— like we don’t deserve the air we breathe

because we breathe it wrong.

I’m too tired to feel sorry for myself

but there’s a part of me that hopes

someone, somewhere

is looking at the same moon

thinking the same thing:

"How long do I have before I fall apart?"

But the answers are just as vague

as the promises we make to our hearts,

all those dead-end roads

we knew better than to take.

It’s hard to stop running

when you can’t remember where you were meant to be.

So I’ll keep walking in circles,

barefoot on cracked pavement,

hoping the stones that get stuck

in the soles of my feet

might be something worth collecting.