I can feel the weight of the world pressing against my ribs,
because silence has grown too heavy to carry alone.
My future feels like a hallway narrowing with every step,
a corridor built from limits I never asked for
the kind carved by disability, by circumstance,
by the long shadow of choices I can’t undo.
People talk about the American Dream
as if it’s a sunrise is waiting for everyone.
But some of us wake to a different horizon
one where the light is dim and the air is thin,
where the path is cracked,
where the map was drawn without our names on it.
I look back and see the wreckage of my past,
the moments I wish I could rewrite,
the mistakes that cling like burrs to my memory.
Regret is a quiet companion,
always walking half a step behind me,
breathing down my neck when I try to imagine tomorrow.
What am I supposed to look forward to tomorrow
when the numbers in my bank account
feel like a countdown instead of a lifeline.
Family keeps me afloat, patching the holes
in a boat that was never built to float in water.
But they won’t be here forever,
and I can feel the clock ticking
on the help I’ve leaned on for so long.
I’ve seen what waits on the other side of a missed payment.
I’ve lived outdoors felt the cold bite through layers that weren’t enough,
watched my breath rise like a ghost in the winter air.
Homelessness is not a metaphor.
It is the sound of wind slicing through thin fabric,
the ache of joints stiff from sleeping on concrete,
the way hunger becomes a second heartbeat.
It is the knowledge that warmth is a privilege,
that safety is a luxury,
and that people will pass by you as if you’ve already disappeared.
It is the rain that soaks through everything you own
because there is nowhere dry to hide.
It is the way nights stretch longer than days,
how darkness becomes a landscape you learn to navigate.
It is the fear of closing your eyes
because sleep means vulnerability,
and vulnerability means danger.
It is the humiliation of being seen
and the deeper humiliation of being ignored.
It is the constant calculation
how long can I stay here,
where can I go next,
what will I eat,
how do I stay warm,
how do I stay alive.
I ask myself,
when time slips through my fingers like sand,
where will I be standing.
Will I be one more shadow under a bridge,
one more body curled beneath a thin blanket,
one more story swallowed by the cold.
I don’t have the answers.
I only have the truth of how I feel
the fear, the uncertainty, the grief
for a future that doesn’t look like the one I dreamed.
Oddly the darkness is sometimes the only way to keep it from swallowing you whole.
And maybe, in the saying it,
everything seems like a small defiance
a reminder that even in fear,
even in doubt,
I am still here,
still reaching for something
that looks like a life worth living.
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