Still Here

There is a snap in the center that no longer responds to light.

It does not hunger.

It does not recoil.

It simply remains.

You called it peace:

a soft withdrawal,

the hush after a storm that never came.

But time unraveled anyway,

thin as thread through water, 

and it never held.

You move, occasionally.

A hand reaches, a mouth chews.

Small rehearsals of being alive.

Enough to keep the body from rotting in place.

Enough to keep the noise from suspecting.

No one has spoken to you.

Not really.

Not in the way that lifts the eyes,

or shifts the air.

You stopped counting the hours

when they stopped needing to be.

What you call freedom

is the mercy of being unneeded.

You have unlatched every door.

And still, nothing enters.

Still, there is no breeze.

There was once a word:

not sacred, but real.

It split your throat just to say it;

made you remember.

Now even the residuals have flattened.

Everything you speak tastes of dust,

or metal, or maybe absence.

A bird struck the window.

Not with force,

but with confusion.

It falters,

regathers its wings,

and flies away crooked,

as if the sky no longer fits.

You watch it disappear beyond the edge of the frame and think:

‘This is how it must feel to look down and see I’m still here.’