Occupied by Echoes

I stand in rooms full of voices
that bend around me
like I’m something to walk past,
not through.

Laughter spills too loudly,
words blur together—
I try to catch them
but they slip
through the noise in my own head.

Someone is talking to me, I think.
Their lips move,
but I’m somewhere else—
back in a moment
I didn’t mean to revisit.

My mind wanders without asking,
pulling me by the wrist
into memories that still feel
too close.

I nod when I’m supposed to,
smile a second too late,
hoping it looks real enough
to pass.

It’s strange—
how you can be surrounded,
shoulder to shoulder,
and still feel like
you’re the only one
not fully there.

Like I’m split in two—
one body standing here,
and one heart
lost somewhere behind me,
trying to make sense
of things it never finished feeling.