The Curtain Never Closes

It feels like I'm slowly disappearing through my own eyes—

like something inside me is slipping out,

quiet and unnoticed.

There's a wall around me I can't break,

like being locked inside myself,

and even I don’t know what I’m hiding anymore.

Some days, it’s like a wire running through me is alive,

whispering,

“I can’t sleep,”

“I can’t think,”

“This is too much.”

But no one says anything.

They just watch.

Waiting for me to be fine again.

The lights go out, and I walk away from it all,

but I don’t leave.

I stay behind the scenes,

haunting the moments I should have moved on from.

There’s no standing ovation for surviving this.

Just a quiet chase

and legs that shake from the effort of pretending.

Thoughts hit me like heavy steel dropped from above—

and every time, I shatter a little more.

I have bruises in places no one can see.

Pain that didn’t come from fists,

but still left a mark.

It lives in my skin, in my bones,

and some days it aches like it’s all I’m made of.

The sadness sits in small things now—

like a half-cut lime going dry on the kitchen counter,

next to a moldy berry and a broken toothpick.

Even the tiny things fall apart.

I clench my hands, trying to hold on

to something that keeps slipping through.

And I remember—

it’s not over.

There’s one more night.

And another.

And another after that.

Until something finally gives.

Until I don’t have to perform anymore.