A Quiet Requiem for the Anxious Soul

I am still learning to breath in a world that never pauses

Photo by from Pexels

The grocery store at dawn is an altar to small inevitabilities. The doors yawn open and closed, exhaling warm breath into the cold morning, inviting the sleepless and the restless into its bright, humming mouth. The overhead fluorescents cast their unholy glow, bleaching the world into something sterile and unfeeling. The fruit aisle is lined with the polished skins of oranges, each one a replica of the other, waxed and glistening under artificial light, their fragrance curling unseen into the refrigerated air.

It is 6:47 AM. The world has already decided itself without me.

A man a few feet away moves with the confidence of someone who belongs to the world by default. His hands, broad and sure, drift over the oranges in practiced indecision, selecting, discarding, weighing each one in his palm as if he is privy to a secret language of matter and ripeness. He does not hesitate. He does not fumble over his own existence. The moment requires a decision, and he makes it.

I have never been that kind of person.

I do not select, I hover. I do not reach, I linger. I do not step forward, I measure the distance between my foot and the floor and wonder if my body belongs in the space I am about…