I used to know the names of trees Without trying Used to sit for hours Watching ants dismantle June Now every morning arrives Like an emergency broadcast Phone light in my eyes before sunlight Energy before breath I measure my life In passwords and expiration dates In little plastic cards That prove I exist There’s a version of me Buried under notifications Under fluorescent aisles Under calendars filling themselves He used to draw strange plants In the margins of notebooks Used to walk nowhere Just to hear gravel speak beneath his feet Now I forget what month it is But somehow still know The exact tone of every machine at work I think modern life Is eating people alive In ways too quiet to notice And I can feel my solitude unraveling Not loneliness Something colder than that Like losing the shape of my own hands Through repetition Through schedules Through becoming useful Every day another piece traded away To keep pace with the buzzing wires And I can feel my solitude unraveling I miss boredom Real boredom The kind where your mind wandered Into forests Into inventions Into impossible little worlds Now silence feels hostile Like I forgot how to sit inside it Even rest became productivity somehow Even hobbies became identity displays Even grief became content There are people Who haven’t seen the sky in weeks Except reflected in glass buildings People whose inner child Died under LED lighting I think modern life Is eating people alive In ways too quiet to notice And I can feel my solitude unraveling Not loneliness Something colder than that Like losing the shape of my own hands Through repetition Through schedules Through becoming useful Every day another piece traded away To keep pace with the buzzing wires And I can feel my solitude unraveling I DON’T THINK WE WERE BUILT FOR THIS THE CONSTANT GLARE THE ENDLESS ACCESS THE FEELING THAT YOU’RE FALLING BEHIND EVEN WHILE STANDING STILL Sometimes I try to remember Who I was before all the noise Before every thought Needed a purpose Before life became Something managed And I can feel I can feel my solitude unraveling My solitude My solitude unraveling
