ManicWorld Magazine

the pills are still on the counter.
they’re lined up in a way that feels intentional,
even though I don’t remember placing them carefully.
they’re chalk-white.
soft at the edges.
they sit there like mute apostles,
not asking anything, just waiting.
obedient.
I take them into my mouth.
not all at once—one by one.
they dissolve slowly, slower than I expect,
like they’re unsure whether they want to disappear.
I swallow them.
they leave no taste behind
but the water feels heavier once they’re gone.
my throat closes around it like muscle memory.
the window across the room doesn’t do anything dramatic.
it just waits.
still.
still and quiet and watching.
i keep looking at it even when it makes me anxious.
my reflection is in there
but it doesn’t feel like me.
or not the real me.

I look like I’m pacing
but also like I’ve already been pacing forever.
my movements lag behind.
it’s like a double image
or a cheap projector that can’t sync properly.
I must seem as if I’m rendered a ghost
stitched together by flickering fluorescent light,
the kind that buzzes at the edge of hearing.
it makes the room feel like it’s vibrating,
like the walls are pretending not to notice.
time is wrong lately.
or soft.
or folded in a way that makes it hard to track.
the days blur into each other
like no one’s bothering to label them anymore.
each hour just folds inward,
then into the next one,
and then that one folds again.
they keep collapsing,
like a paper cage with too many seams.
and when it finally gives out,
it’s silent.
nothing announces it.
it’s already gone by the time I notice.

some nights the quiet becomes unbearable
not because it’s loud
but because it stretches open into something else.
the silence stops being background
and becomes a thing of its own.
I start hearing it.
or hearing through it.
sometimes it sounds like voices
but not like people.
more like the idea of sound
moving through ice.
the words don’t form clearly
but they land somewhere behind my eyes.
they tell me
that gravity doesn’t matter as much as I thought.
that I could forget to breathe and nothing would stop.
that I am optional.
optional like a subtitle.
optional like the dimmer switch in a room
that no one really needs to turn on.
I want to reply.
I really try.
but my mouth is frozen.
not by fear exactly,

more by something older than that.
something like resignation.
I try to get up.
my body stays put.
not out of defiance
but heaviness.
the kind of heaviness that doesn’t ask questions.
I end up dragging it behind me
like a piece of wet clothing
in a room where the air doesn’t move.
eventually, the light comes.
not softly.
not like hope.
it just arrives.
merciless and dull
and gray like the color of forgotten laundry.
it drapes itself over me
like anesthetic left on too long.
I wake up.
the body does too.
slowly, reluctantly,
like we’ve both agreed to keep going
even though no one’s holding us to it.
it feels like co-signing a contract I didn’t read

and still
even now
even in the weakest morning light
something small stays bright.
I don’t know what to call it.
it’s not joy.
it’s not resistance.
but it lingers.
a thread across the floorboards.
thin and persistent and unwilling to leave.