Good ones.

They make me laugh.

They listen when the world gets too loud.

They show up.

And yet,

There are moments I disappear.

On purpose.

Not out of anger. Not sadness. Not even exhaustion.

Just this quiet need to be unreachable.

To let my skin settle after too much noise.

Because even with closeness,

sometimes I feel like I have no one.

Not in the dramatic, echoing kind of way.

Just in the soft ache that no one fully sees me in the way I need.

It’s not loneliness the way it’s written in poems.

Not the kind that begs to be held or fixed or filled.

It’s a loneliness I carry like a soft shawl

draped around me when my thoughts are too loud and everything else feels like static.

Sometimes I sit in it.

Let it hold me instead.

Silence wraps around me, time slows, everything softens.

And it doesn’t mean I’m breaking.

It doesn’t mean I want someone to knock on my door and ask what’s wrong.

It just means this is how I survive.

By pulling away to remember who I am

beneath the noise,

beneath the jokes,

beneath the trying,

and beneath the loneliness no one quite notices.

And sometimes, loving me means letting me vanish for a little while

so I can return whole.

And when I do,

the world steps back just enough,

for quiet to take shape in me,