I watch from afar,
where shadows sit heavy on the edge of the room.
Habits grow like ivy – unquestioned,
entitled vines curling around what once was simple.
I say nothing.
Silence is safer than storms.
When I speak,
my voice feels foreign to the air
the weight of subtle things,
too delicate to carry on casual tongues,
too sharp to rest easy in the heart of another.
So I brood.
A quiet ritual of sorting grief
in a world that mistakes stillness for surrender.
When asked what’s wrong,
I reach for words that vanish mid-thought,
and the distance grows again.
Old wounds echo
not in pain, but in the memory of misused trust.
To be known was once a danger,
a vulnerability bent into a weapon.
So now,
I build walls from the inside out.
Connections knock gently
I hesitate to open.
Not for lack of longing,
but for fear of finding
another hollow space where presence should be.
And so I shrink
into moments that ask little of me
a shared laugh on a flight,
a quiet meal,
the pulse of new streets beneath worn shoes.
These are my offerings to joy small,
but mine.
I do not reach far anymore.
I have learned the art of stillness,
not as peace,
but as protection.
And in that stillness,
I survive.
Vishal Gupta
