the next day.

It had been a long week.

Long enough for the quiet moments

to start saying things

I had been trying not to hear.

The streets kept moving.

Everyone seemed to have somewhere to be.

Headphones on, head against the glass,

watching lights blur without really seeing them.

And somewhere along the way,

I caught myself wondering

when it had all become so heavy.

Not all at once.

Just a little more each day

we pretended it was nothing.

Until nothing started to feel like everything.

Maybe some things only feel this big

because we carried them for too long

in pockets we forgot we had.

Strange, isn't it?

How something can follow you everywhere —

in a song, in a street,

in the way your name almost comes up

in conversation, and you swallow it.

Until one day you finally wonder

why you kept looking back

at something that had already

stopped looking back at you.

And still, the next morning came.

As it always does.

Even when you don’t ask it to.