I’ve received two similar comments this month that I haven’t quite been able to sit well with.  

Maybe this is too harsh of an analogy, but it feels like just because I carry a visible burden, it suddenly becomes the only thing people see — as though that one visible weight is enough to define me by lack, flaw, or limitation.  

As though a person becomes “disabled” not because of who they are, but because others can no longer see beyond the thing they carry.

And maybe what unsettles me most is how dangerous that assumption can become. Because once people decide for me what I can or cannot carry, it quietly creates an escape route — an out from asking, expecting, or believing I would have shown up otherwise. As though the assumption itself becomes permission to withdraw the ask before I even have the chance to answer it.

Are you the romantic 

The things you do they will never know 

Like walk a distance in the sun 

Just to be near the building they would end up in 

Even though you would not be meeting

Sitting at a cafe across the road

Walking pass the block path where the balcony would face 

Deliberately finding, ordering, tasting a sandwich which was mentioned in passing 

Watching them settle into their cab till you only see the taillights but they do not see you taking it all in 

Waiting for the actor you want to take their place before choosing to share the story 

Watching the act and falling into that comfort to embrace the closure 

At the crossings they became the viewpoints and you are drawn to that energy 

Even for a second within the same space just a brush 

The many unsaid moments 

The rain made a sombre shade of black on the bark

Green became highlights to this silhouette 

Dews made edges softer 

It has been seventeen years and I do not feel too far off from then 

Maybe my shadow has changed a shade 

Still trying to find my calling 

And wondering why I am still messing up 

Maybe this appears when you linger 
You look at the carousel of bags and wonder  
Did it or you got left behind 
Are you carrying more than you should 
When thoughts resonates deeply in silence 
The set up of intentions for control 
Everything a manifestation of a past mantra 
What the eyes can’t see 
Won’t hurt 

This quiet ache

Refused to linger in a crowded room

Nor required wine to float

Pulling off another performance

Felt like a removal of another spark or tearing out a page

The tuning fork

Roamed the silent cemetery of text

That was home

Table by the window 

Seated at a distance

Watching the rewind

Would listening be different now

There is no return 

Nothing but a name

I sat across the table we sat

Searching shadows 

Smelling the rain 

Feeling the breeze 

Heavy on the inside 

Holding back to reach 

It is not right 

Another route, maybe

Flirted with the idea.

The other one.

But what is that even for?

How many times does the cycle rerun

before I forget why I hated the reruns in the first place?

What’s the price of being wanted—

and why is it still too cheap and too expensive at once?

Is it absence? Or a craving for chaos dressed as clarity?

Do I chase the noise because silence reminds me

of everything I don’t say out loud?

There’s that moment before regret

where it still feels like a good idea—

and sometimes I just want to live there.

Right there.

Before the ruin.

I’m not where I should be.

And I hate saying that out loud, even to myself.

Nothing’s broken, but nothing fits.

And that’s almost worse.

Crossroads, static

Paused at the edge.

Phone in hand.

One text would echo like a ping through water—

I know it’d reach you.

I know you’d come.

Quick.

Clean.

No questions.

But I didn’t.

I walked.

Stopped.

Bought something to sip,

Not for the taste,

but for the time it bought me.

I just needed to not crash into something again.

To slow the reel.

To not be a rerun.