I Hear the Next Step
by Dawg
My brain manufactures catastrophe from silence in the room,
every quiet moment breeds scenarios of impending doom.
The phone that doesn’t ring means someone’s died or left for good,
and peace is just the prelude to the chaos that it should.
I read disaster in the way she hesitates before she speaks,
decode apocalypse from simple pauses that last weeks.
Inside my skull where normal people store their basic calm,
I’ve built an arsenal of panic primed to detonate like bombs.
I hear the next step coming down the hall,
the one that brings the ruin and destroys it all.
My mind’s a fucking prophet of the worst that hasn’t been,
turning every silence into where the screaming will begin.
The doctor says I’m healthy but I’ve catalogued the signs
of seventeen diseases lurking dormant in my spine.
And when she smiles at me I’m calculating when she’ll leave,
what betrayal she’s rehearsing up her sleeve.
I map escape routes from every building that I’m in,
prepare for fires floods and wars that haven’t yet begun.
My neighbors think I’m paranoid and maybe that’s correct,
but I’ll be ready when the shoe drops and they’re fucking wrecked.
Happiness is just a trap for people who don’t see
the landmines planted everywhere that wait for you and me.
I’ve studied every angle every way this falls apart
and memorized the pain before it even gets to start.
They tell me live the moment let the future find its way,
but futures always find you and they never come to play.
They come to take their payment for the crime of feeling safe,
for thinking you could breathe without the world around you caving in.
Every dawn arrives like evidence I somehow overlooked,
that yesterday’s survival was a clerical mistake in books
the universe keeps trying to correct with fresh disasters,
aimed precisely where I’m standing, breathing faster and faster.