A Song Only I Can Hear

Everyone sings the song of togetherness. Some sing solo.

A song I can only hear.

         In the quiet of midlife, I walk along a narrow corridor.

Few earned the fragile label of friends; acquaintances at most,
They remain shadows that brush past,
                                                                               flickering like candlelight
                                       through fog.

My perception of reality twists - folding past and present,
                   a single ribbon that others cannot untangle nor follow.
                                                 
Social cues arrive as cryptic hieroglyphs.
                                                 
The world’s rituals—handshakes, small talk, casual jokes
appear as coded ceremonies performed by actors:
                                       scripts I cannot decipher, leaving me silenced.

The others label me odd, strange, weird—
                   arrows I do not
                                                                                         recognize.
                             
Inner voices are a chorus of distant voices,
some comforting,
                                                                                                   most unsettling.
                                                                                                   
The world spins on familiar tracks, yet my train runs on a parallel line, unseen by conductors and passengers alike.

Others label me an enigma,

a puzzle with missing pieces,

never realizing the puzzle itself
 

was never meant to be solved.

                             
Pensiveness cloaks me, but it is not a flaw,
testament to the depth of my inner world,

vast
 

uncharted.

In the silence of the night I create,

pages filled with questions and thoughts,
 

a testament that my inner world sings-

A song I can only hear.

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