Connection

Can you call my mother?
She’s here, but she’s not,
her voice, soft with worry,
never quite reaches me.
She asks if I’m okay.
But I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know how to explain
that I am here, but I am not.

Have you seen my father?
He stands tall,
but I see his gaze,
always searching for something
he can’t quite find in me.
He holds out his hand,
but I flinch,
not from him,
but from the space between us,
the quiet that feels too loud.

We used to be one—
but now I’m lost in the gaps,
in the places we don’t speak,
in the things we don’t say.

They don’t know what’s happened to me,
don’t know the weight of the world
I’ve been carrying alone.
They try to see,
but their eyes look past the parts of me
that have changed.

I’m waiting for them to find me,
to hear what I cannot say.
I wish they could see the pieces
that have broken away.
Yearning for a secret to slip through.
Wishing the words would pass trembling lips.
Like trying to grasp air when I can’t even breathe it—
freezing ice slipping past delicate fingertips
and shattering on monochrome floors in an empty bathroom;
tiles tarnished by a trailing tear,
invisible on cold marble.

But we’re all still here.
Searching for something
we can’t quite reach.
A connection we’ve forgotten how to find.