I have been quiet lately.

I have so much to say, but it is stuck beneath a lump of anxiety in my throat.

I am concerned for the world in which I live. I am concerned for people who are hurting, and helpless, and homeless. They are everywhere, and the weight of them sits on my chest at night. I roll over onto it. I trip on it on my way out the door in the morning. I bang my elbows up against it when I turn corners.

But there is me, and I am barely making ends meet as it is. I am reconciling a long list of bad choices, and it’s got me hovering barely above zero right now.

Just a few more years, as I like to say. It’s been my mantra since I was 19.

And I think, so this is how they do it. This is how people work forever. They lose track of the mornings and nights, they lose two-to-five years in the blink of an eye, they spin week after week into a deepening sigh.

I feel like everyone. Like a part of the giant machine. Like a little notch in a gear somewhere, creaking silently in a dark corner.

I feel like no one. Like this is not my life. Like I’m a cactus in a desert. Storing what I’ve got because there isn’t any more in sight.

Dry.

I find that with the passing of time, my poet soul gets progressively angrier inside my ribcage. It pokes pins into the back of my eyes until I am forced to cry.

This week, it is shouting.

WAKE UP, it says. DO SOMETHING. SAY SOMETHING.

Feel something.