What I Forgot While Being Useful

The world didn’t leave.
I did.

I folded myself smaller
until I fit inside a checklist.
Learned to speak in deadlines.
Learned the holiness of “later.”
Learned that if I stayed useful enough,
nothing bad would happen.

That was the deal.

Days became transactions.
Breath in, task out.
Nothing wasted.
Nothing felt.

I told myself this was adulthood—
this narrowing.
This clean, efficient grief.

No one warned me
that the world would start to feel obscene.
Too loud.
Too wide.
An accusation.

When I stopped moving,
the silence was violent.
Like being dropped back into a body
I hadn’t lived in for years.

I didn’t remember wonder.
I remembered obligation.
I didn’t miss freedom.
I missed not needing it.

It takes a long time
to realise the list is not keeping you alive.
It is only keeping you busy.

And when the list ends—
not finished,
just abandoned—
there is no applause.

Only the ache of space.

The sky does not ask what you’ve completed.
The road does not care if you’re behind.
The night offers itself
without instructions.

At first, the wideness feels like failure.
Like you’ve forgotten something crucial.
Like you should go back and earn the right
to stand there.

But the world does not require proof.

It has been waiting
the whole time you were disappearing.

And remembering is not gentle.
It is not kind.
It is the slow, ugly work
of letting your life become dangerous again.