The Disappearing Act

It starts with slow steps

not dramatic, not loud.

Just the quiet

unraveling

of threads no one sees.

You laugh,

and the sound is real enough

to fool them.

Your smile,

a Robin Williams smile

sunlight with sorrow sewn in.

They say,

“You’re so full of life.”

And you say,

“I’m as happy as Robin Williams.”

But nobody listens

close enough to hear

the blade in that sentence.

No one pauses

at the weight behind the joke.

You were raised for the stage,

trained to entertain,

to sparkle when dying inside.

To make them feel whole

so they wouldn’t notice

the hollow in your chest

growing wider

each time you saved someone

from their own silence

while yours grew louder.

You dance through ruin,

holding up walls with your bare hands

as they crumble.

You try to move forward

but gravity has fangs

and it bites into your ankles,

pulling you back into the wreckage

you swore you’d escaped.

The mirror becomes a stranger.

Not suddenly,

no dramatic transformation…

just a slow fading,

until one day,

you meet your reflection

and feel nothing

but a dull recognition.

Whoever you were

has been leaking out for years.

Life is heavy at the start,

but somehow it gets heavier.

You carry it without

a net,

without shoulders to lean on,

without arms that reach back.

Your support beams were never built

only patched with hope,

with laughter,

with fragments of dreams

you weren’t allowed to keep.

You walk through a world

that takes

more than it gives,

where people mistake your pain

for laziness,

your exhaustion

for weakness,

your survival

for performance.

And you start to believe them.

Burnout becomes your religion

a slow rot of the soul,

an ache too deep

for language.

But still…

you smile.

You always smile.

Because that’s what you were taught to do.

And no one ever taught you

how to stop.