Redline

The tires clawed at the asphalt. The engine vibrated through the carbon-fiber shell, up through the aluminum frame, through the bucket seat, and directly into the base of my spine.

I pressed my foot harder against the pedal.

Faster. Always faster.

Ahead, the track stretched into a long, gray ribbon before curving sharply out of sight, only to loop back somewhere beyond the bend and meet me again. I knew this circuit. I had memorized its ripples, its seams, its patches of fresh sealant. I had driven it hundreds of times. Perhaps thousands. Yet every single time I approached that blind corner, a familiar, delusional hope flickered in my chest: I convinced myself that this time, there would be something different waiting on the other side.

An open highway. A new continent. A clear sky. A finish line.

So, I chased it.

When the race first began, I had a head start. I remember that much. The world felt vastly wider then, bathed in a bright, uncritical light. The air in my lungs tasted crisp, untainted by exhaust fumes or hot rubber. The grandstands were packed to capacity, flags of every color snapped in the wind, and high above the deafening roar of tuned engines, I could hear people shouting my name.

I was young enough then to believe in simple mathematics: that starting ahead meant finishing ahead, and that the driver who pushed the hardest would naturally cross the line first.

So I burned bright. I ran the tachometer deep into the red line, demanding more from the machine than it was ever designed to give. I spent my nights walking the track on foot, memorizing every apex, every braking marker, and every subtle elevation change. I learned the precise physical limits of traction. I learned when to dive down the inside of a turn, when to aggressively defend my position, and when to set my jaw, hold my line, and refuse to yield to anyone.

Most importantly, I learned how to endure pain. Because there was always another lap. Always another sector to improve. Always another opportunity to prove that I was not slipping behind.

Over time, the checkered flag transformed from a sport's objective into a singular, consumed obsession. It was a destination stripped of nuance, reduced to two basic colors: black and white. Simple enough for a child to grasp. Win, and the noise in your head stops; win, and everything suddenly makes sense. Lose, and you strap yourself back into the seat and try again.

So, I tried again. And again. Not because I possessed an unshakable confidence that I would win, but because my ego could not process the alternative.

There were brief, intoxicating moments when the world felt entirely aligned. The floodlights would catch the morning dew on the windshield, turning the glass into a shower of light. The engine didn't scream; it sang, perfectly attuned to the movements of my hands and feet. As I clipped the rumble strips at two hundred miles an hour, the entire crowd would rise to their feet as one continuous wave. For three or four fleeting seconds, the universe narrowed to an absolute point. No past mistakes weighing on my shoulders. No future anxiety waiting in the paddock. No existential questions. Only pure, unadulterated velocity.

Those were the highs. I collected them with frantic precision. I stored them in my mind like rare photographs, like war medals, like physical proof that all this sacrifice was buying something real. A pole position here. A career promotion there. A newer car. A faster team. A bigger contract. A higher summit climbed.

To keep finding those moments, I had to travel farther. I packed my life into flight cases and moved across cities, across borders, across oceans. I changed circuits. I changed categories. I changed the color of my suit. I changed the faces of the mechanics standing behind the pit wall.

Yet somehow, the underlying geometry of the road never altered.

The scenery outside the visor shifted from pine forests to desert sands to neon-lit city streets, but the direction of my life remained entirely static. I would arrive at a new pit garage, smell the fresh paint and aviation fuel, and tell myself: This is it. This is where the struggle pays off. This is where I finally step into the life I was meant to live.

Then the five gantry lights would illuminate one by one, go dark, and I would dump the clutch and start racing all over again.

I dreamt incessantly of the podium. Not just participating in the ceremony, but standing on the narrow, elevated central block marked with a large '1'. I wanted the heavy brass trophy in my hands. Something solid, dense, and permanent enough to validate every bridge I had burned, every relationship I had let wither, and every night I had sacrificed to get there. I pictured myself looking down from that height, peering back at the circuit winding through the valley, and finally having the right to say: It was worth it.

But I kept falling short.

Second place. Third place. Fifth place. Sometimes off the pace entirely, parked on the grass with smoke billowing from the engine bay. There were night races where I could no longer even see the taillights of the leaders ahead of me. Their red LEDs would shrink down the back straight, turn into tiny crimson embers, and then vanish completely beyond the horizon.

It hurt. The disappointment was a physical ache in my chest, a cold weight in the pit of my stomach. But I had been conditioned to believe that pain was merely weakness leaving the body. That feeling miserable was never a valid reason to stop.

So, I tightened my gloves until the leather strained. I mashed the throttle against the floorboards. And I tried again.

Maybe the next stint. Maybe the next setup. Maybe next season. Maybe after I fix my technique. Maybe after I lose ten pounds. Maybe after I become ruthless enough to deserve the victory.

I became a master of "maybe."

The unspoken cruelty of the racing world is that nobody ever asks if the driver is tired. They only check the timing screens to see your lap times. Nobody sees the hands shaking uncontrollably under the fireproof gloves during a yellow flag. Nobody hears the suffocating silence inside the helmet when you're pulling four G’s through a long sweeper. Nobody understands how profoundly lonely it is to have fifty thousand spectators screaming your name while you realize that not a single soul in the grandstands knows who you actually are under the helmet, or where you are going.

They see the spectacular overtake. They don't see the terror of losing control. They see the champagne on the podium. They don't see the silent hours spent lying flat on a hotel bed, staring at a white ceiling, wondering if the prize is worth the devastating cost of the pursuit.

They admire the driver. They completely ignore the human being behind the wheel.

And somewhere during those endless, blur-filled miles, a quiet terror took root inside me. I didn't fear crashing into the concrete barriers at top speed. I didn't even fear losing the championship. I became utterly terrified of the engine stopping.

I was terrified because I realized I had completely forgotten who I was when the noise died down. If I wasn't moving fast, did I exist at all? Would anyone still look at me if I wasn't on the track? Would I have any identity left if I didn't have a target ahead of me to hunt?

So, I kept driving.

I drove when the low-fuel warning light flashed yellow on the digital dash. I drove when the tires were stripped down to the steel belting, throwing sparks into the night air. I drove when the engine misfired, coughing cloud after cloud of black smoke into the air box.

I kept driving because everyone else around me was still on the gas. The telemetry showed them pushing. The pit board told me the gap was closing. And if the rest of the world was still running, then surely I had no choice but to keep running too. That was the unwritten rule of the track.

Wasn't it?

Then came an evening. One ordinary, unremarkable evening between Turn 4 and Turn 5, when a thought struck me with such sudden force that my foot almost slipped off the pedal. It was a realization far more terrifying than any mid-corner mechanical failure.

I didn't actually know where the finish line was.

I had given up everything for it. I had traded away stable relationships, years of rest, peaceful weekends, and fundamental pieces of my own humanity whose names I could no longer even recall. And yet, if someone were to pull me out of the cockpit and demand to know where this road actually ended, I couldn't point to a spot on the map.

I sat back in the seat and let the question ring through the carbon-fiber shell of my helmet:

Where is the finish line?

No voice came over the team radio. No pit board was held over the wall. The engine just continued its monotonous, screaming drone.

I looked through the bug-splattered visor. Ahead lay another long straight away. Another heavy braking zone. Another apex. Another lap.

Why does it still feel just as far away as it did ten years ago?

Silence.

I glanced into the vibrations of the side mirrors. Reflected in the dark glass were all the previous versions of myself that I had overtaken and left behind along the way. The wide-eyed boy who used to push toy cars across the living room carpet. The tired teenager who just wanted to sleep for a week. The young man who used to pull over on country roads just to sit on the hood and watch the sun dip below the trees.

I had left them all in my dust. Or perhaps, worse still, they had simply grown exhausted and stopped following me.

I asked myself where I was supposed to steer next. The answer rose up automatically, hardwired into my muscle memory:

Forward.

It was the only command my brain knew how to process. Forward. Never pause to ask why. Never demand a destination. Just hit the apex, floor the pedal, and move forward.

That was when I began to notice the glitch in the landscape.

It started with a specific advertisement on a trackside billboard. A faded sign for a tire company I knew had gone out of business years ago. A few miles later, I passed a distinct, lightning-scarred oak tree standing just beyond the safety barrier. Then I noticed a familiar, jagged crack running diagonally across the braking zone of Turn 8. The same grandstand layout. The same marshal post. The same yellow flag waving in the same patch of fading sunlight.

I had travelled thousands of miles across different continents, yet I was driving on the exact same loop of asphalt I had started on.

I wasn't discovering new territory. I was merely completing infinite iterations of the exact same circuit.

The realization settled over me like a heavy, suffocating fog. The track suddenly felt claustrophobically narrow. The concrete retaining walls seemed to pull inward, inches from my mirrors. The corners felt unnecessarily sharp, the air inside the helmet grew thick and stale, and my racing harness felt less like safety equipment and more like a straightjacket.

I began frantically scanning the perimeter for an escape route. There had to be an exit gate somewhere. Every professional circuit has pit lanes, service roads, access points for ambulances and tow trucks. Where were they?

I searched every foot of the barrier, but there was nothing. Just smooth, unbroken concrete. Just painted curbs and tire walls. I was trapped in a high-speed labyrinth built out of checkered flags and broken promises, running faster and faster because someone, long ago, had convinced me that velocity was the same thing as freedom.

And that was the most agonizing realization of all: I technically had the power to stop.

I could have pulled off the racing line. I could have eased onto the grass, yanked the gear lever into neutral, and turned off the ignition. I could have unbuckled the harness, popped open the visor, pushed open the lightweight door, and stepped out onto the quiet turf.

But my hands refused to perform the movements.

Because somewhere deep within the marrow of my bones, a stubborn, toxic belief remained: I still believed that crossing the line in first place would magically fix my life. I believed that if I could just land one more major victory, if I could elevate my status just a little higher, if I could collect enough silver trophies to fill the empty rooms in my head, then every mile of suffering behind me would suddenly transform into a heroic, meaningful narrative.

So, I kept racing.

I raced when my joints ached from the vibration. I raced when the loneliness felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest. I raced even when I could no longer remember the original reason I had fallen in love with driving in the first place.

To pull over felt like an admission of absolute defeat. And to my broken mind, failing felt infinitely worse than continuing to burn.

There were stretches of the track where I wanted to pull the wheel hard to the left and slam straight into the concrete wall just to make the noise stop. Moments where I prayed for a mechanical failure. A shattered suspension arm, a blown engine, a sudden puncture. Anything that would make the decision for me. I wanted someone to stand in the middle of the track, wave a red flag, reach into the cockpit, and say: The race is over. You've done enough. You can go home now.

But nobody stepped onto the track. Nobody was coming to save me.

So I kept my bleeding knuckles locked around the steering wheel. I kept my eyes focused on the strip of road visible through the windshield. I kept my foot pinned to the floor. Burning fuel, burning rubber, burning my own life away to stay in motion.

I wish I could make it sound logical. I wish I could offer a clear, rational explanation for why I spent my youth pursuing a horizon that continuously receded as I approached it. I wish I could explain it to you in a way that makes you nod in understanding. Not because I am seeking your applause, and not because I want your pity. I just want the story to make sense to a human mind. Because if it makes sense to you, then perhaps one day, it might finally stop feeling like insanity to me.

I am terrified, and I am resilient. I have learned over millions of gear shifts that those two states are not mutually exclusive. Fear can sit comfortably in the passenger seat beside courage. Utter physical exhaustion can share the cockpit with unyielding ambition. Sometimes, true strength isn't the romantic absence of terror or the desire to surrender; sometimes strength is simply the cold, mechanical refusal to let go of the wheel, even when you have completely lost your way.

So, I continue.

Not because I have a map, and not because I trust the road ahead, but because I have spent so many years in motion that the act of driving is the only language my body remembers how to speak.

And then, as I clear the crest of the hill, I see it again.

The checkered flag.

It hangs in the distance, small and indistinct against the twilight sky, easy to mistake for a bird or a piece of blowing debris. But as the car surges down the straightaway, it grows larger, its black and white squares fluttering in the turbulent air.

I have chased that pattern across half a lifetime. Black. White. A simple, binary promise disguised as a piece of nylon.

I downshift once, twice, feel the engine rev-match with a sharp bark, and then lay down the power again. The world narrows to a pinprick: gray asphalt, bright halogen headlights, and the deep, rhythmic sound of my own breathing inside the helmet. No grandstand noise. No radio chatter. No competitors beside me. Just the car and the road.

I cross the finish line at full throttle.

And I wait.

I wait for the sudden wave of enlightenment. I wait for the inner peace I was promised. I wait for some profound, cosmic confirmation that every mile of isolation, every burnt gallon of fuel, and every abandoned piece of my soul was leading toward a grand design.

Nothing happens.

The engine ticks quietly beneath the carbon hood, hot oil dripping into the sump, metal contracting as it cools in the night air. I take off my gloves, drop them into the footwell, and stare blankly out through the windshield.

Ahead of me, the track doesn't end. It doesn't transform into a gold-paved road or open up into a peaceful park. It simply curves gently to the left, winding quietly into the dark trees, exactly as it always has. It never promised me anything else. The promise was something I had manufactured entirely in my own head.

I look up into the rearview mirror. Red tail lights illuminate the dark asphalt behind me, showing a chaotic network of black tire marks. Lines crisscrossing lines, rubber laid down over rubber, years of aggressive entries and desperate exits layered on top of one another until the surface looks like an abstract painting of an unraveling mind.

I look at those marks and remember the pit stops I thought would reset my life. The victories I assumed would make me whole. The people I promised I would come back for. The younger, softer versions of myself I executed every time a new sector time required me to be colder, faster, and less human.

Standing at the edge of this quiet track, after all these miles, a terrible question dawns on me: How much of this journey actually belonged to me, and how much of it was just momentum carrying a ghost around a track?

I could pull the handbrake, turn the car around, and drive backward against the direction of the race. But that would only take me through scenes of past damage I have already paid for.

I could turn off the key, step out, and lie down on the cold grass. But the thought of absolute stillness feels far more terrifying than the physical strain of driving.

So I sit there in the dark cockpit, listening to the quiet pinging of the cooling exhaust pipes.

Then, high above the gantry on the pit wall, a single row of bulbs flashes.

Green.

I don't remember requesting another stint. I don't remember signing up for another lap. I don't remember wanting to go back out there.

Yet, as if operated by invisible cables, my hands reach out and grip the leather wheel. My right foot finds the gas pedal. The starter motor whirs, and the engine roars back to life, filling the air with the smell of unburnt fuel and warm oil.

For a fraction of a second, I hesitate.

And in that hesitation, I recognize a strange, dark comfort: I know this road now. I know where the pavement dips under heavy braking. I know where the moisture collects in the early morning. I know where the darkness hides the apex, and I know exactly how much throttle to give to keep the rear end from stepping out.

Perhaps that is what keeps all of us moving in our own quiet loops. Not the genuine belief that we are going to arrive somewhere new, but the dark, familiar solace of knowing the bumps on the road behind us well enough to trust our hands when the next blind corner arrives.

I push the gear lever forward. I release the clutch. The rear tires break traction for a second before biting into the tarmac, launching the car forward into the dark.

The grandstands loom up out of the gloom again. The pit lights blur into long streaks of amber and white. The horizon folds itself neatly into the familiar entry of Turn 1.

And somewhere beneath the deafening, mechanical roar of the engine, I hear a small, forgotten voice calling out from deep within the chassis. A voice from twenty years ago. My own.

How much farther?

I don't answer. I just look ahead into the darkness illuminated by my headlights, turn the wheel into the apex, and wonder, for the very first time, whether the race was ever meant to be won, or if the road was simply built to keep the driver from having to stop.

The track bends to the left. I follow it.

And the lap begins again.

Erosion of Home

I spent most of my life chasing something I could never touch.

It was always there,
just out of reach
like light leaking through a closed door,
spilling into the hallway
as if to remind me what I was not allowed to enter.

Close enough to feel.
Never close enough to hold.

So I kept reaching anyway.

Like something starving,
scratching at iron gates until the skin gave way,
convinced warmth existed on the other side.

That was the shape of it.

That was me.

I told myself it would change one day.

That eventually,
the distance would soften.

That one day your eyes would settle on me
and stay there.

Not pass through.

Not look away.

Stay.

As if I had finally become something worth keeping.

I built myself around that possibility.

Carefully.

Like rebuilding a house from fragments after a fire,
hands still trembling,
trying to convince myself the foundation would hold this time.

Piece by piece.
Bone over bone.
Scar over scar.
Silence over silence.

I learned how to soften myself where I was too sharp.
How to disappear when I was too loud.
How to become acceptable.

But no matter how carefully I arranged myself,
something always felt misaligned.

Like a room rebuilt from memory,
almost correct,
but never quite livable.

There was always too much of me.

Too many thoughts crowding the inside like birds trapped in glass.

Too much anger, settling heavy in the ribs.

Too much longing, stretching everything thinner than it could safely hold.

You had given me a road once.

Straight.
Predictable.
Clean.

A path where nothing unexpected was supposed to happen
as long as I kept walking forward.

But it felt like surrender dressed as guidance.

So I left it.

I walked into something that did not have edges.

Into places that did not care if I survived them.

And I chose it anyway.

Every bruise.
Every wrong turn.
Every silence I swallowed instead of calling for help.

Mine.

That is where I think we started to disappear from each other.

Or maybe we never really met in the way I needed us to.

Sometimes I think distance does not begin with leaving.
It begins in rooms where no one speaks fully.
In meals that end without conversation.
In the sound of cutlery against porcelain
because it is easier than words.

I remember those nights.

Yellow light above the table.
The refrigerator humming like a tired breath.
A clock that never stopped reminding us of time passing without us.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

You on one side.

Me on the other.

A table between us that might as well have been another country.

We spoke in fragments.

Did you eat.
How was work.
You’re late.

And beneath it all,
something unspoken pressed against the walls of the room
until even silence felt crowded.

Years passed like that.

Rooms full of presence,
but never connection.

I was breaking quietly in front of you.
And you never said anything.
Or maybe you did notice,
and chose not to.

I still do not know which version hurts less.

I have done things I do not know how to carry.
Not monstrous things.
Just human ones.
Small fractures that accumulate over time
until you no longer recognize the shape of yourself.

I betrayed myself in quiet ways.

I stayed silent when I should have spoken.
I left when I should have stayed.
I held on when I should have let go.

I learned how to live with the noise inside me
by turning it into something that looked like strength.

And I know you had your own noise too.

I saw it in the way your anger arrived without warning,
filling the room before anyone could prepare for it.

In the way your silence lasted long enough to change the temperature of a house.

In the way love always felt measured,
like something rationed carefully
so it would not run out too quickly.

I carried all of that with me.
Not as memory.
As weight.
And now time feels different.
Not passing.
Pressing.
Like something leaning slowly against my chest
until even breathing feels negotiated.

The walls feel closer these days.
Not around me.
Inside me.
As if something within has started folding inward,
making less room for what remains.

I wake sometimes and feel the quiet before thought arrives.

That strange moment where everything feels suspended,
like the world is holding its breath without me.
And I wonder if this is what leaving feels like
when nothing actually moves.
Just diminishing.

We are all children of something we did not choose.

Raised in rooms too small for what we would become.
One day everything is laughter in open spaces,
bare feet on warm floors,
voices overlapping without effort.
And then one day,
without announcement,

everything becomes quieter.

Doors stay closed longer.
Names are said less often.
People begin to disappear without leaving.

Not suddenly.

Gradually.

Until you stop noticing the absence
because it has become normal.

I think that is what happened to us.

Not an event.

An erosion.

Years wearing down what could have been solid.

I wanted to tell you everything.

The nights I sat in parked cars long after arriving,
unable to bring myself to go inside.

The mornings I looked at my reflection
and felt like I was looking at someone I used to know.

The exhaustion of being alive
without ever feeling fully present inside it.

The loneliness that does not announce itself
but settles in like dust,
everywhere at once,
impossible to clean.

I wanted you to know me.

Not the version that functioned.

Not the version that survived.

Me.

The unfinished thing beneath all of it.
The parts I never learned how to explain without breaking something.
But we never built the language for that.
What we had was smaller.

Safer.
Weather.
Work.
Food.

Silence.

Always silence.

And now there are miles between us.

Not measured in roads or distance,
but in everything that was never said
and slowly became permanent.

I kept thinking there would be time.

That one day we would sit without pretending.
That words would finally come easier than silence.
That I would not have to carry everything alone anymore.
But time does not wait for understanding.

It only moves.

And sometimes that is enough to lose everything quietly.
And maybe you were proud of me.
Maybe it existed somewhere underneath everything else.

Or maybe it did not.

I do not know.

That is the part that stays.

Not the absence.

The uncertainty.

Still standing in doorways that never fully close.
Still waiting for something that no longer knows how to arrive.
I guess some versions of us never stop waiting.

I used to think I was waiting for you.

Now I am not sure I ever left that doorway at all.

And I cannot tell anymore
whether I am the one who was supposed to come in…

Or the one who was supposed to be found.

And the silence after that feels complete.

Thank you for everything, Dad.

Canvas of Life

I am holding a paintbrush,

trying to pour colour into a life
that has forgotten how to glow.

Standing before a canvas so wide
that I cannot see where it begins
or where it ends,
I realize I have been painting for years
without ever understanding
what picture I was trying to create.

One careful stroke at a time,
one trembling line across empty space,
another shade pressed into forgotten corners,
another quiet attempt
to convince myself that broken things
can still become beautiful.

I dip the brush again.

Blue dissolves into black.
Red bleeds into grey.
Colours collide without permission,
running into places they were never meant to go.

Some drip downward
like tears falling from tired eyes.
Some spread across the surface violently,
as if they are trying to escape the frame itself.
Others simply disappear,
swallowed by darker colours
before anyone notices they were there at all.

I keep painting anyway.

Because somewhere between desperation and hope,
I convinced myself
that if I just tried harder,
if I added one more colour,
one more line,
one more piece of myself,

Everything would finally make sense.

I thought maybe life worked like puzzles.
Maybe every missing piece
was waiting patiently somewhere,
and all I had to do
was keep searching.

But no one ever tells you
that some pieces disappear.

Some are lost forever.

Some arrive broken.

And some fit perfectly,
only to leave empty spaces behind
when they decide not to stay.

And then I stop.

I step back from the canvas.

I stare at it in silence,
trying to discover art hidden somewhere in the mess I created,
trying to find poetry between crooked lines
and purpose inside accidental stains.

But the lines are not parallel.

They do not meet.

They wander away from one another
like strangers pretending
they were never meant to belong together.

The shadows are too dark.
The light never reaches the places I wanted it to.
Nothing looks the way I imagined.

I search for meaning
the same way people search for stars
in polluted skies
hoping something beautiful still exists
behind all the noise.

Then I realize something.

Sometimes,

Some things are beautiful exactly the way they arrive.

A blank white canvas
untouched by doubt.

A brand-new car
before roads leave dust in its veins.

A heart yet to discover heartbreak.

A smile
that has not yet learned how to disguise pain.

Morning sunlight entering an empty room.

Fresh footprints in untouched snow.

A song before memories attach themselves to it.

Hands before they learn
what it feels like to let go.

Perhaps perfection only exists
before our hands begin interfering.

Maybe I am the problem.

Maybe in my endless need to repair everything
every fading light,
every sinking ship,
every wounded soul.

I forgot to notice
that I, too,
was slowly falling apart.

Maybe while trying to save everyone else from drowning,
I never realized
the water had already reached my lungs.

Maybe I became so busy
holding broken pieces of other people together
that I forgot my own hands were bleeding.

Funny how pain works.

You become so familiar with carrying it
that eventually
you stop noticing the weight.

You learn to walk with chains
until they begin to feel like skin.

Then suddenly,
everything breaks open.

Years of silence collapse all at once.

Words I swallowed.
Tears I buried.
Memories I locked away behind doors
I promised never to open again.

And the avalanche finally arrives.

Not with noise.

Not with violence.

But quietly.

The way winter arrives at night
and steals the warmth from everything by morning.

The way dust slowly settles on forgotten photographs.

The way oceans quietly erode mountains
without anyone noticing.

Some destructions do not scream.

Some arrive softly,
sit beside you,
and slowly teach your heart
how to become heavy.

Now I am no longer holding the brush.

Now I sit in the passenger seat,
watching someone else paint on my canvas.

And strangely,
I do not seem to care anymore.

Let them take the keys.
Let them steer

Because from the passenger side, it looks so easy. 

Their hands do not shake. 

Their strokes move with a clinical certainty,
as if they can hear a melody
I spent years searching for. 

They create constellations where I saw only emptiness,
they force harmony onto my chaos,
painting a life that looks beautiful to everyone else
while I sit quietly in the corner,
wondering how it is possible to feel like a ghost inside your own masterpiece. 

I watch how easily they choose colours. 

How naturally they fake the beauty.

How confidently they move through uncertainty.

And I wonder

Was I holding the brush wrong all along?

Or was I simply trying to paint sunlight during storms?

I glance down at my hands.

There is dried paint beneath my fingernails,
colours from battles
I do not even remember fighting anymore.

Tiny scars rest on my fingers,
silent reminders
of wars nobody knew I was in.

Proof that I kept trying.

Proof that I kept holding together things
that were already falling apart.

Proof that somewhere along the way
I mistook survival
for living.

Then I return to silence.

But silence is never empty.

Silence is crowded.

It carries every scream that was swallowed,
every goodbye left unfinished,
every feeling that arrived too heavy
to ever become words.

Silence remembers everything.

Even things we desperately try to forget.

Especially those things.

The quiet ones are often the people
who once felt too much,
until one day,
they felt nothing at all.
And I am no different.

I carry a heart that feels eighty years old
inside a body still pretending otherwise.

A tired heart.

One with exhausted walls
and old scars hidden beneath every beat.

Do not be deceived by this foolish smile.
some smiles are paintings too.
painted carefully across tired faces,
created to convince the world
that everything is still standing
even when entire cities inside us
have already collapsed.

My heart left the conversation a long time ago.
It returned only for attendance,
arriving every morning with mechanical loyalty,
beating because it had to,
not because it wanted to.
And yet somehow,
sadness remained behind.

Funny how sadness always knows where home is.

There are different layers to every person.
The layers we proudly display.
The layers we polish beneath bright lights
for others to admire.
The layers we speak about loudly.
And then there are the hidden ones.

The abandoned rooms.

The locked doors.

The pieces of ourselves
we pray no one ever discovers.

Mine feel like endless hallways now.

Rooms covered with dust.

Windows that have not seen sunlight in years.

Echoes of old laughter
still bouncing off walls
long after everyone has left.

And I am afraid mine have grown too thick.

Too heavy.

They wrap around my heart
like chains disguised as protection,
holding me down,
pulling me backward
every time I try to move forward.

Teaching me how to sink
while convincing me I am standing still.

Maybe I did not begin with the softest brush.

Maybe my colours were never the brightest.

Maybe my hands shook too much.

Maybe I was never meant to become a great painter.

But I tried.

God knows I tried.

I stood before this canvas of life
with hopeful eyes and trembling hands.

I painted with everything I had.
With love.
With fear.
With hope.
With heartbreak.
With dreams too heavy to carry.
With expectations I could never reach.

With pieces of myself
I can never take back.

And what I had at the end
was not beautiful in the way I imagined.

It was chaotic.

Wild.

Messy.

Full of unfinished corners and accidental storms.

But maybe we all carry similar canvases.

Each of us walking through life
holding different brushes,
different colours,
different scars hidden beneath our sleeves.

Maybe we spend too much time
trying to paint inside the lines,
never realizing that storms
were never meant to stay inside frames.

Maybe everyone is just pretending
to understand what they are doing.
Maybe everyone is staring at their own mess,
calling it failure,
while someone else looks at it
and calls it art.

Maybe mine was never the most beautiful.

Maybe people would look at it
and only see confusion.

But I would see every sleepless night,
every battle survived,
every silent war fought alone.

I would see every version of myself
that died quietly
so another version could keep moving forward.

I would see fingerprints in the corners,
evidence that I never stopped trying to hold things together.

Because it was mine.

Every stain.
Every crack.
Every ruined line.
Every colour I spilled while my hands were shaking.

Mine.

And maybe life was never about creating a masterpiece.

Maybe it was never about perfection.

Maybe it was never about painting something
people would stop and admire.

Maybe it was only about having the courage
to keep painting,

even when your hands tremble,

even when colours betray you,

even when storms ruin entire sections of your sky,

even when you are convinced
you have already destroyed everything.

Because perhaps one day,
many years from now,
I will stand before my canvas one final time,
look at all the chaos,
all the mistakes,
all the uneven lines and shattered colours,

And finally smile.

Not because it became beautiful.

But because despite everything,

I never put the brush down.

Hollow

I awaken

not because I have rested,
but because punishment requires consciousness.

Sleep is a temporary exile.
Morning is the sentence.

I return to myself unwillingly,
dragged upward through layers of stale dreams
into a room that feels like an abandoned cathedral
hollow, echoing, dust suspended in pale light
like the ashes of something that once burned.

Guilt greets me first.
It is punctual.
Fear follows closely behind,
never missing its cue.

The thoughts I once tried to silence
have grown disciplined.
They line up neatly,
waiting to be reviewed
evidence in a trial where I am both defendant and judge.

Life has not merely turned grey.
It has curdled.

Color exists somewhere, I assume,
but it refuses to attach itself to me.
The sky bleeds without warmth.
The air tastes metallic.
Even memory feels drained,
like photographs left too long in the sun.

Every day loops
a corridor of identical doors,
each one opening to the same narrow room
with the same unmade bed
and the same version of me
staring back from the mirror
with less definition than the day before.

No joy.
No anticipation.
No love that does not rot under scrutiny.

Here is my sin:

I prefer the ache I recognize.

Pain, when familiar,
is manageable.
Predictable.
It does not surprise me.
It does not abandon me.

To reach for something brighter
would require hope
and hope has teeth.
It bites harder than despair
when it withdraws.

So I remain here,
in the well-mapped geography of sorrow,
tracing the same emotional fault lines
until they deepen into canyons.

But age is merciless.
It forces reflection like a mirror held too close.

I begin to ask questions
I cannot outrun:

What if I had taken the other turn?
The riskier one.
The one that trembled with possibility
instead of certainty’s suffocation?

Who would I be?
Would I recognize myself?
Would that version of me
walk lighter
or would he be equally broken,
just in a different language?

The thought constricts around my throat
like wire.
Not a dramatic rope
just thin, quiet pressure
tightening gradually
until breath becomes negotiation.

Words fail me.
They scatter like insects when exposed to light.
Language was never built
to contain the shape of this emptiness.

I stand at the edge of something unnamed.
It looks like insanity from afar,
but up close
it feels more like clarity.

I have been waiting
for rescue,
for revelation,
for some external force
to interrupt the monotony of my unraveling.

I cling to hope
like a drowning man clings to driftwood,
refusing to notice
it is waterlogged.

We betray ourselves gently.
Not in violence,
but in repetition.

In choosing the known wound
over the uncertain cure.

I wanted to feel okay.
That was the ambition.

Not extraordinary.
Not radiant.
Just… tolerable.

I studied others
their laughter,
their spontaneity,
the effortless way they occupied space
without apologizing for it.

I learned to imitate.
I curated responses.
Adjusted tones.
Softened edges.

And eventually,
I became convincing.

So convincing, in fact,
that even I believed it.

But imitation is erosion.

Each borrowed gesture
filed away something original.

Each performance
left residue.

Now I stand
with a face assembled from fragments
not quite false,
not quite real.

I cannot release who I was.
I cannot embrace who I’ve become.
I exist in between
a poorly stitched compromise.

Every path feels incorrect.
Every detour folds back into itself.
The maze stretches endlessly
fear forming the walls,
regret the floor,
guilt the ceiling pressing lower each year.

I run.
I search.
I exhaust myself.

No shortcuts.
No hidden exits.

Just the growing suspicion
that escape was never designed
for me.

And then,
in the thickest hour of night,
when silence hums louder than thought,
the realization arrives

There is no maze.

There never was.

No walls.
No architect.
No cruel design.

Only me.

I built the corridors
out of hesitation.
Laid the bricks
with postponed decisions.
Mortared them
with fear of being wrong.

The tourniquet?
My hands.

The grey sky?
My eyelids half-closed.

The exit?
Visible the entire time.

But here is the darker truth

I knew.

Somewhere beneath the rehearsed despair,
beneath the comfortable suffering,
I knew I could leave.

I simply chose not to.

Because staying
requires less courage
than living.

And so the twist is not that I am trapped
but that I am loyal
to the trap.

Morning comes again.

I awaken.

And this time,
I do not blame the maze.

I tighten the wire gently around my own throat,
call it routine,
call it realism,
call it fate

And step back into the corridor
I constructed
with deliberate hands.