Frequency

There's a radio bolted inside my head,
someone else keeps spinning the dial.
Thoughts show up cracked down the middle,
memories come through static and buzzing,
answers snap in half
right before I catch them.

People figure silence equal's calm.
They've never lived inside a skull
where a thousand voices talk over each other
at once.

I've fought with pieces of myself
that only show up late at night.
I've watched dread build entire cities
then talk me into thinking they were real.

Here's the strange part about static,
it may sound like it counts,
but a broken signal still makes you go looking.
A garbled message still sends you hunting
for the words that got lost.

My brain manufactures problems
faster than I can put them down.
It grabs one small worry
and drags it into a courtroom,
turns every memory into a witness
against me.

I spent years trying to tune out the noise,
hunting for that one clean frequency
where things would finally click.
Turns out the signal was never the problem.
The problem was thinking
each sound deserved a seat at the table.

Some thoughts are sirens.
Some are ghosts dressed up in old memories.
Some are strangers
who somehow know me.

The static doesn't leave.
It circles back, always.

Here's what I've learned in the process,
a broken signal can still carry something true.
A crowded head can still build meaning.
A person can stand in the middle of a storm
and find one patch of ground
where the noise finally sits down.

I'm learning to listen a different way.
I'm learning every interruption
is hiding a story under it.
I'm learning my mind
can be a war zone
and a doorway, both at once.

Author's Note

I want to be upfront about something. I'm okay. This poem didn't come from a crisis. It came from years of studying and years of listening. I hold a degree in psychology, and over the years I've sat across from people who described their minds in exactly these terms. Crowded, distorted, full of interference that they cannot turn off.

This piece is an attempt to hold their voices with care, and to give meaning to something a lot of people go through but rarely talk about it. If you recognized yourself in these lines, you're not alone in that, and you're not broken for hearing static where other people hear silence. If any part of this poem stirred something heavy in you, please reach out to someone, a friend, a therapist, a hotline. You deserve support that goes beyond a page.

Thank you for reading.