Unfiltered

A River in Time: Endless Thoughts, Infinite Drift

The sun spills over the horizon,

but I don’t feel it yet, not here.

It’s early—I know this because the light is still soft,

gentle enough to fool me into thinking I have time.

Time—what is it today?

Just a word?

Just a rhythm I haven’t quite caught up to yet.

Sometimes, I think I’m running alongside it,

watching it like a train I never board.

I feel it all pressing on me, the hours and minutes,

but I sit here, unmoving,

as the world spins like a coin I can’t reach out and catch.

The coffee smells like yesterday’s,

bitter and burnt, but I drink it anyway,

it’s a ritual, isn’t it?

To do the same thing over and over,

believing that somehow today will be different.

Is it different? I ask myself—

but my mind is already elsewhere,

racing ahead into thoughts I didn’t ask for.

The mind is a trickster like that,

leading you places you didn’t mean to go.

There’s a song stuck in my head.

I don’t know where it came from—

somewhere between the cracks of sleep,

a melody that loops like a broken record,

but I can’t remember the words,

just the hum of it, vibrating in the background.

Does everyone have a soundtrack?

Do we all walk around with this silent music

that nobody else hears?

I get up, my feet cool against the floor,

but it’s not enough to ground me.

There’s a heaviness in the air—

it clings to everything, like the weight of thoughts unspoken,

a thousand things unsaid,

and the day hasn’t even really started.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I carry the heaviness,

dragging it around like an invisible bag full of things

I never needed but never let go of.

The window is open,

and I can hear the world outside,

but it feels far away, like a dream I’m not part of.

Cars rumble by,

people talking,

the distant hum of life that moves without noticing me.

Maybe it’s better that way—

to be the quiet observer,

to watch but never be watched.

But even as I think this,

there’s a pull inside me—

a longing to be part of the noise,

to feel like the world is not just something I see

but something that touches me,

wraps itself around me,

pulls me in.

There’s a clock ticking somewhere,

its sound too loud for the silence of the room.

It reminds me that I’m supposed to be doing something,

but what?

I’ve forgotten the list,

the things I said I’d accomplish.

Did I write it down?

I think I did, but where?

It doesn’t matter.

I sit back down, the chair creaks,

and the sound feels like an answer to a question I didn’t ask.

Outside, the leaves rustle—

there’s a breeze, faint but there,

like a whisper that almost makes sense.

I remember being a child,

lying in the grass and listening to the wind

tell stories I couldn’t understand,

but I believed them anyway,

trusted that the world was full of secrets

just waiting to be discovered

if I listened hard enough.

When did I stop believing in that?

When did the world become just a place to walk through,

instead of something alive, something speaking?

There’s a sadness in the thought,

but I push it away—

there’s no time for sadness now,

not when the day is already demanding so much.

But it lingers,

like smoke that clings to the air long after the fire’s gone out.