Member-only story
POETRY
The Isolationist
A poem
You've been made to accept a reality
where no one calls without reason, without need.
You're acutely aware that you are a vacancy
a shadowed room awaiting light you've never known
and no longer believe in.
You walk so softly
the ground forgets you.
You've invested years in perfecting the art of vanishing
driven by your fear of abandonment
of a promise revoked
like a game of hide and seek where you're unfound and forsaken.
"It's safer here," you chant like a prayer.
Safer where silence is the natural state
where it doesn't stir the sinking weight of rejection.
You've made this isolation a fortress
built from the memories of severed ties.
They say it's a symptom.
You recognize it as survival.
The wound may be unseen, but your voice struggles to break
the surface of your heart thickened to a silence so dense.
