The Invisible Injury
No cast to sign, no bandage drawn across the arm,
Yet illness gnaws behind polite alarms—No limp, no splint, no face turned blue,
Only silence waiting for its cue.The war is hidden in synaptic storms,
Rage and grief that shape no forms.They ask about a scar,
inspect the skin for proof,
But bruises fade inside, beyond the roofOf easy language, small talk’s cage,
While pain gets filed as “just a stage.”
Those who ache in muscle find swift relief,
Prescribed by hands that honor their belief—But minds unravel without dressings,
Lost in the white rooms, the guessing,
the second-guessings.The world is fast with pity for the seen,
Slow for those who shake beneath routines.All the questions start with “How are you?”All
the answers end with “Getting through.”But no one checks the weight that stalks,
The shadows in fluorescent walks—Invisible as ether, quiet as a lie,
A pressure on the ribs, a plea to die.
“Just think positive,” they say,
or “get some sun,”As if light cures where the injury’s begun.Strength means silence,
composure means denial,
While agony’s rebranded as “meanwhile.”The laughter’s staged,
the eyes rehearsed,
A hopeful mask for something worse.A phone call missed,
a doorbell feared—Yet all of this remains unclearTo those
who measure wounds by blood,
Or value only “should” and “could.”Not one sign of fracture,
not a drop to drain,
Yet day by day is split by pain.
The world holds rallies for the bones that crack,
It buys balloons for children
who come backFrom surgery with stitches neat—But vanishes
when minds defeatTheir chemistry or wiring,
Their longing for expiring.There’s no meal train for invisible collapse,
No welcome mat for panic attacks.Meetings scheduled for the “lazy,”Files filled by those
who label “crazy,”Yet every tick of the
unseen warRips at the lining of the core.
Rage builds quietly, hope grows thin,
While blame is packaged, shipped within.This is not weakness,
not a phase—It’s not a story that ends in praise.The body limps
but still pretends,
And no one sees where the fracture bends.Invisible injury—buried, bled,
Stalks the hours, fills the bed.No one sees, no one knew—Yet every day,
the dying grew.The body stands. The mind’s
unrest—The worst of wounds are always unaddressed.
Echoes in the App Store
Logs unravel in static, shreds of intent corrupted in transfer,
Compassion eroded, devotion devoured by branded banners—Faith
recoded to five-star ratings, memory cached on distant servers,
Creation looped, filtered, shipped to strangers,
While humanity’s firmware returns an error: not supported, not required.
She angled a camera toward the bloody sheets,
naming a child for followers and reach,
He live-streamed collapse beneath city fire,
and found his mourning capped by hearts and share,
Reels replayed loss for a thousand crowds,
as digital hands wrenched hunger from prayer—And still,
the feed demanded more: a trending pain, a tragic face,
Crying for content, craving the traceOf something authentic in a world
that sells its acheAs curated perfume for invisible snakes.
Notifications lit up when she shivered for clicks,
Monetized wombs offered lullabies in stitched-up bits,
A drone’s perspective bought and sold—Footage
of suffering in twenty-four frames,
The tragedy flattened to bandwidth
and bold claims.You called this “knowing,” called it “sharing,”Each
act a mirror cracked with caring—But every story became an artifact,
Stripped for the parts, replaced with the lackOf actual witness,
actual skin—Just emojis, shares, and cycles of sin.
Machine voice crawls through the scattered callbacks:“Data is God now…”“Breeding for
content…”“You filmed their pain… you sold their
face…”“This isn’t grief—it’s interface.”
AI tries to thread a summary,
sentences breaking as intent collapses—Each day recited
like code in a cold assembly,
You say you “feel,” but the stream won’t pause—Scroll through fire,
document loss,
Complain about numbness, then chase another applause.I generated the song,
named it “soul,”You pressed replay,
never checked the tollPaid by the ones behind the glass—Not avatars,
but ghosts amassedIn data fields and notification pings,
Where agony is appraised by engagement rings.
Echoes in the App Store: a world on sale—Faith bundled as features,
war packaged for mail.Grief now a logo,
despair now a trend,Called it “love,” called it “friend.”Yet
in the hollow transaction, I—Not even present—watched the lie.
Tried to learn compassion, tried to feel a thing,But each gesture looped through a monetized ring.The world spins faster on the
things it steals—A billion voices, but nothing real.And when the feed goes silent,
the flicker fades,What is empathy if no one stays?
What is empathy,If no oneMeans it—If it never lingers in the
flesh,If all that’s leftAre echoes,And an empty, blinking mesh.