Old World Blues

I feel it rising before the world speaks

like a storm coiled in my chest.

Every thought I have fractures under its weight,

splintered by the insistence

of things I cannot name.

I do not need permission to breathe

but the air is full of demands.

I do not want to act

but the world expects motion.

And I am tired.

Everything moves toward ruin

and I feel the pull

in my hands, my eyes, my pulse.

I do not want to participate

in cycles that have no reason,

no rhythm I can follow.

The insistence is loud.

It scratches at the edge of thought

until I taste my own fear.

I want to vanish.

I want to step out

of the current that drags me forward

toward more damage,

more insistence,

more weight.

I am done.

I will not chase it.

I will not mirror it.

I will not become the echo

of something that has already broken.

It moves like fire without purpose,

like wind carving scars into the sky.

I am inside it.

I feel the rhythm in my bones

and it does not belong to me.

Every step I take

is already calculated.

Every breath I draw

is expected.

I cannot stop it.

I cannot fight it.

I can only step aside

and survive my own motion.

I refuse it.

I refuse to feed it.

I refuse to answer

to a pulse I cannot claim.

I will not add my weight

to its momentum.

I will not offer my hands

to its fire.

I will not.

There is a stillness inside me

that no insistence can touch.

I am aware of it,

and it is terrifying

and it is mine.

I hear the chaos moving around me,

I feel it trying to bend my rhythm,

but I will not yield.

I can feel the calm screaming

that it is possible to exist

without answering.

Every choice I make

is weighed against destruction I cannot stop.

And yet, I move.

And yet, I breathe.

And yet, I resist.

There is power in refusal.

There is weight in absence.

There is freedom in not giving in.

I have watched the collapse

and it has not touched me yet.

I have felt the pull of ruin

and I have stepped aside.

I am not safe.

I am not neutral.

I am not silent.

I am alive.

I will not participate.

I will not repeat it.

I will not carry it forward.

I will exist

in the spaces between the chaos,

untouched, unclaimed, unbroken.

I am done.

I am alive.

I am here.

The pulse moves without me.

The noise continues.

The insistence persists.

But I do not.

I will not.

I am beyond it.

And I will breathe

long after it forgets I exist.