Two halves

Everyone asks me: what’s wrong?

As if the answer lives close to the surface,

as if it can be pulled out in a sentence,

placed between words, and handed over neatly.

But what’s inside me doesn’t come in sentences…

it comes in fragments.

I don’t remember when it started ..

only that somewhere along the way, I split.

There is a version of me that moves through the day,

smiling at the right moments,

responding, existing, passing through people like nothing is broken.

And then there is the other one,

the one that stays behind,

sitting in the quiet aftermath of everything,

collecting what I couldn’t say,

carrying what I couldn’t show.

What’s wrong with me is not one thing.

It’s layers.

Days that pressed too hard.

Days when life wasn't fit to be called a life.

Days when everything was taken.

Words that never found a place to land.

Feelings that learned to fold themselves small

just to fit inside a world that kept moving.

It’s the habit of saying “I’m fine”

until the word itself lost meaning.

It’s being here...fully here.

and still feeling like no one can see

how much I’m holding together at once.

So I go quiet.

Not healed.

Not okay.

Just… quieter.

At night, when everything softens,

I try to understand myself,

but even then, the thoughts don’t line up.

They scatter,

like pieces of something that was never allowed to stay whole.

The worst part isn’t the sadness, or the clawing grief.

It’s the way it settled in,

made itself familiar,

until it became part of how I speak,

how I see,

how I almost feel happiness..

but never all the way.

They ask me: what’s wrong?

And I hesitate…

Because I don’t know which version of me they’re asking about...

the one that stands, steady, unshaken on the outside,

or the one inside,

that feels like a place constantly rebuilding itself

after something unspoken,

again and again,

without ever being asked what it lost.

.

.

Aura

11:45 pm, May 6th 2026