SILENCE SURROUNDS ME

I. THE INNER BOUNDARY

Silence surrounds me
slowly, like a shadow that knows me.
I don't see it,
but I recognize it:
I know it's there,
always,
like a friend who doesn't speak.
I touch it with my hands,
I feel it on my skin,
until I can feel it's real.
An invisible boundary,
one I never wanted to give much thought to,
not as an absence,
but as a place of my own,
coming closer slowly,
almost without being noticed.
II. THE DISTANCE FROM MYSELF

It reveals me to myself.
For a moment I stop:
I hadn't seen myself in a long time
in this silent state,
like an uncomfortable truth
that doesn't wait.
In a form that doesn't belong to me,
more distant, colder,
more silent.
It brings back the distance
between me and myself:
what I really am
and what I have forgotten.
III. A WILL NOT MY OWN

And I really don't feel
that I am.
For just a moment
I am surprised,
but not that much:
I already knew
I wasn't like this.
I wonder
what kept me
from truly wearing
the clothes
of my own self.
Then,
whose are they, if not mine?
What am I seeing in the mirror?
A will that isn't mine,
while I become something
I don't recognize.
I didn't make room
to know
my real self.
What kept me from it?
What did I betray,
really?
IV. WHAT CAME BEFORE US

The thought that we are not the ones
who own what we move through,
and that everything that came before us
remains untouched,
fills me with wonder.
I'm not saying that everything
we perceive
is really wisdom,
but what we leave of ourselves behind
to belong to life
can sometimes look
like self-love.
Author’s Note
There are moments when silence does not feel empty. It comes close enough to make us notice what, for a long time, we have learned not to see.
This poem began in one of those moments.
What emerged was not an answer, but a sense of distance—the feeling of looking at myself and recognizing something that no longer felt entirely mine. Perhaps, in trying to find our place in life, we sometimes leave behind parts of ourselves without realizing it.
I do not know if what we discover in such moments can be called wisdom. I only know that sometimes silence brings us face to face with questions we had managed to avoid.
And perhaps the most difficult one is not who we have become, but what we left behind in becoming so.
— Antonio Castellaneta

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