Trying To Survive

You walk into the room

carrying a thousand imagined eyes.

Every whisper feels borrowed from your name.

Every laugh sounds like it bent around your shadow.

Your shoulders tighten

under the weight of invisible spotlights.

But look closer.

The woman by the window

is replaying something she said three years ago.

The man near the door

is calculating rent, regret, and tomorrow’s meeting.

The cashier smiles automatically,

already worrying about the bus ride home.

No one is studying your steps.

No one is archiving your pauses.

They are busy defending themselves

against their own mirrors.

You think your stumble echoed.

It did not.

It dissolved into the air

between someone else’s private fears.

You believe your silence was noticed.

Meanwhile,

another heart is racing over a sentence

it never dared to say.

We are constellations

convinced we are the sun.

Each of us burning

at the center of our own sky,

certain the orbit revolves around us.

But the truth is quieter:

Everyone is thinking about themselves

with the same intensity

you are thinking about you.

The spotlight you fear

is just a reflection

from your own anxious light.

Step lighter.

Speak freer.

Trip without ceremony.

The world is not a courtroom.

It is a room full of people

trying to survive

their own thoughts.