The Road Drops Here

The road drops here—

not with warning,

not with ceremony,

but with the silence of breath held too long.

I was standing still

when the horizon tilted

like a plate shifting its burden,

and gravity remembered me.

Streetlights leaned toward the ground,

trees stretched sideways,

and clouds bled out of the sky like

bruises on pale skin.

The cars kept moving.

The people didn’t notice.

Or maybe they did,

and they learned to walk

as if nothing had changed.

But I fell forward.

Not stumbling—

falling.

Like a truth finally told,

or a secret released from the ribcage.

My shadow ran ahead of me,

longer than it had any right to be.

It whispered things I hadn’t thought in years—

names, places,

a voice I’d buried beneath logic and routine.

I tried to reach back

for something steady:

a memory,

a name,

the shape of my old life.

But the world had tipped,

and I was already

over the edge.

I landed in a place

that looked like my city,

but not quite.

The colors were tired.

The signs pointed inward.

The clocks only ticked in dreams.

I walked past buildings

that blinked like eyes,

past people who didn’t blink at all.

They spoke in sideways syllables

and laughed in reverse.

A child handed me a paper bird

and said,

“Fold it backward, and you’ll fly back up.”

But I didn’t want to fly.

Not yet.

Because here,

in this broken geometry,

I saw the shape of what I’d missed:

The ache I’d ignored.

The truth I’d evaded.

The soft sound of grief

curled up like a cat in the corner of my chest.

The road drops here,

but not forever.

Eventually, it levels.

Eventually, the tilt becomes the new straight.

And when it does,

you stand again.

Stranger to yourself,

maybe.

But whole.

The world still leans.

But so do I.

Now I carry a compass

that only points inward,

and I follow it

not back—

but forward

into whatever shape the road becomes next.