nothing, really

A poem about intuition arriving before language can contain it.

You don’t tolerate
the half-lit version of things.
Not out of principle—
out of irritation.

The polite distortions
people pass around
with steady hands,
as if nobody can taste the dilution.
You taste it immediately.
Metallic.
Off.

You want it clean.
Not pretty—clean.
The kind of clarity
that makes people shift in their seats,
check their pockets,
suddenly remember other places
they should be.

So when something misaligns
your mind doesn’t argue—
it leans in.

Tilts the thing.
Listens to it.
Not with ears—
with that internal instrument
that hums
when something’s been tampered with.

A thought returns.
You ignore it.
It comes back altered,
wearing a different coat,
smelling faintly of the same problem.

You push it out again.
Now there are two of them.
They breed like that.
Quiet infestations of almost-truth.

Because underneath the language—
all that careful phrasing,
those well-combed explanations—
something is stuttering.

A misfire.
A skipped tooth in the gear.

You don’t call it doubt.
Doubt is too polite.

This is recognition
arriving without manners.

Your body clocks it first.
Always does.
Sleep goes shallow.
Food turns into texture.
You catch yourself staring at nothing
and realizing it’s not nothing—
it’s the shape of the thing
you haven’t admitted yet.

People will tell you to relax.
To let it go.
To stop “overthinking.”

They say this
like a priest reassuring a man
the blood on his hands
is probably paint.
So the mind gets to work.
Not loudly.
Not heroically.

It starts dragging the truth
out from wherever it’s been hiding—
under tone, under timing,
under that slight delay
before someone answers
a question that should be simple.

Slow work.
Dirty work.

You don’t enjoy it.
No one with sense would.
Because once you see it
you inherit it.

It sits there with you.
At the edge of conversations.
In the pauses.
In the way someone says your name
like they’re testing it for cracks.

You already know.
That’s the worst part.

The knowing came early.
Everything since has just been
confirmation
trying on different outfits.

You’re built for coherence.
Not comfort.

So when something comes to you bent,
warped just slightly—
your mind doesn’t ask permission.

It starts applying pressure.
Carefully at first.
Then not so carefully.

Until the thing either straightens
or breaks.

And the truth—

it doesn’t knock.
It seeps.
Through the seams,
through the joints,
through whatever soft place
you forgot to guard.

Until one day you’re sitting there
holding it fully formed,

and it’s looking back at you
like it’s been there the whole time,
waiting for you
to stop pretending
you didn’t recognize it.

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Pay attention
to what your body notices first.

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