The Silence I Tried to Kill

I went hunting for silence,

thought I’d find it sleeping between hours,

curled in the ribs of midnight.

Instead I found echoes,

the soft kind that wear your own voice like a disguise.

I followed their scent through the corridors of thought,

barefoot, afraid to startle the stillness I craved.

Each step cracked open another memory,

each breath disturbed the dust of what I meant to leave buried.

Silence ran from me.

I heard it brush against the walls of my skull,

a small animal too quick to catch,

too knowing to be cornered.

It darted behind heartbeat,

hid beneath tongue,

slipped through prayer and profanity alike.

When I aimed my calm at it,

I missed.

When I begged,

it laughed,

sounding exactly like me.

By dawn, I’d torn every thought apart

looking for the space between them.

What I found instead was breath,

and beneath that, pulse.

Even that,

too loud to be peace.

I knelt in defeat,

and the silence crept close,

placed a hand on my throat.

This was never about finding me,

it whispered,

but about learning how to stop chasing.

Now I sit with the noise.

It hums like a captive heart.

Sometimes, if I hold it gently enough,

I hear silence breathing beneath it,

wild, unbroken,

alive.