Architect of Silence

I. The Weight of the Silence in the Room

The days collapse into one another like identical gray bricks. i wake late, i sleep late, but i do not dream. sleep does not let me escape, it is only a pause. every slumber makes me fear the awakening. the ceiling always greets me with its also colorless indifference. i could stare at it for hours, but it only breathes dust.

i do not live; i wait. for what, i cannot say. perhaps to die. perhaps for the world to forget me entirely. perhaps for something to change. but am i truly willing to change?

time itself feels heavy, not moving me forward, but pressing down on me. every hour adds another of those gray bricks to the walls that cage me. but i do not move. the world passes by in whispers and hums.

my body is a carcass i drag from bed to chair, from chair to bed. it obeys gravity more than will. limbs ache in places i forgot existed. my skin feels like paper soaked in rain.

meanwhile, i just stare at my screen. and the screen waits. a rectangle of light that is both an open window and a cage. it promises me connection, distraction, escape. but i know it gives nothing. it only reflects my exhaustion back at me, magnified, pixelated, sharper than reality. it didnt take long for its window to close, and put me back in my cage. but sleep cannot come yet. it will only restart the cycle. the gray bricks are not done being built.

II. The Weight of Inaction

i do not move, i do not act. because actions and decisions demands a faith i no longer possess. each action feels like a betrayal, a tiny act of hope disguised as habit.

the world calls this laziness. failure. i call it survival. survival is a faint pulse beneath the ashe of my will, a pulse i can only perceive because i refuse to act. as a form of rebellion against society. acting would mean giving up.

i am ashamed of it, but the same is soft, almost comforting. to feel nothing, to move nothing, is to exist without the expectation of accomplishment. i am nothing but a shadow waiting for its own erasure.

sometimes i imagine myself standing, speaking, walking, acting, living. but the imagination collapses before i can even finish. i remain in bed, in chair, in room, as if actions themselves were a fortress i could not leave. and the walls grows taller with each passing gray brick.

III. The Girl

she is mine, and yet she is not. she laughs even when i am not there to hear it. and the sound fills the hollow spaces of my chest i thought were only accessible by myself.

her voice is fractured in ways i would never forget. this Girl could not pronounce certain words. that is the first thing i noticed about her. some vowels deserted her tongue, leaving gaps like broken windows in her speech.

i found her imperfection beautiful, because every sentence reminded me that language itself was fragile, uncertain, untrustworthy.

she laughed about it; i wanted to worship it. her flaw was a truth greater than anything else i knew: that all expression is crooked, incomplete.

but life has a cruel way of denying possession. i reached once, and the world intervened, or was it my own fault? was it because of her distractions, obligations, the indifference of everything and everyone? my arms wrapped around air. my small hope shut down completely.

and the world continues to pile its small betrayals on me, building walls i cannot scale.

no. i am the cause of my own betrayals. i built these walls i could not scale myself. i built this fortress so resistant, that no one could get in. but i got trapped in it myself.

and so the day passes. and i remain pinned beneath it all. placing myself the gray bricks of disappointment, of absence, of longing. another layer added to the walls i cannot escape.

IV. The Weight of All

i am the architect of my own silence. every inaction, every missed word, every failed attempt to reach out, those are my own bricks. i laid them one by one, believing i was safe inside. only to realize the walls were too high for even me to scale. i am trapped by my own choices, my own fear, my own hands.

and yet, the world did not help. society does not care for hesitation, for doubt, for weakness. it pushes, it judges, it builds its own walls around me. small betrayals, indifferent faces, unspoken rules, expectation i cannot fulfill; they pile atop the bricks i made myself. i am crushed, not by one hand alone, but by two: my own, and the indifferent grip of everything around me.

i cannot separate them. the fault i carry and the fault the world imposes are intertwined, like roots strangling a tree. sometimes i want to scream, to point fingers, to untangle the mess. but no matter where i look, every accusation folds back onto me. i am guilty, and yet, the world is guilty too.

and i understand, finally, that i am not alone in this. the world conspires with me and against me simultaneously. i am both the prisoner and the warden. every disappointment, every failure, every small humiliation is a gray brick. my fault. society's fault. together they rise, piling endlessly above me.

i lie beneath them, not broken, not alive, not free. i am weight. i am shadow. i am waiting. and the bricks keep coming.