root system

They named the leaves, each fluttering disease—

Anxiety’s quick wind, attention split thin,

The glass-wall self of lost depersonalized ease,

Dissociation’s drift, depression’s din.

Each symptom tagged, each branch examined close,

The bark scraped raw for proof the pain was real,

Yet no one bent to where the darkness grows—

The buried ache no chart can fully feel.

I told them how my body rings with fear,

How time goes flat, how focus comes undone;

They nodded, marked the surface year by year,

Prescribed me shade but never sought the sun.

For all these names are echoes, not the voice,

Ripples that hint at something deeper set;

Without the care that listens past the noise,

The source remains untouched, alive, unmet.

Until you kneel where history and hurt

Entwine beneath the nervous system’s plea,

The symptoms bloom again from injured dirt—

Different flowers, same necessity.