Good enough

I keep looking over my shoulder

Several times a day

Every day

My whole life

I look because I know.

Something is there.

A presence stitched into the darkness,

woven between shadows and silence,

breathing when I breathe,

stopping when I stop.

It never leaves.

I feel it standing just beyond sight,

where my eyes cannot reach,

where certainty rots into fear.

Sometimes I wonder if it follows me.

Then I remember:

It doesn't have to.

It's already there.

Every mistake I make seems to feed it.

Every stutter,

every failure,

every unfinished dream

becomes another eye opening in the dark.

Watching.

Watching.

Always watching.

I walk faster. It doesn't matter.

I hide in crowded rooms. It doesn't matter.

I wrap myself in laughter,

in smiles,

in careful words,

but it sees through them all.

It knows how tired I am.

It knows how often I fall short.

It knows that no matter how hard I run,

someone else runs farther.

No matter how brightly I shine,

someone else burns brighter.

And it waits for me to notice.

To notice how small I am.

How replaceable.

How easy it would be for the world to continue turning without my name carved into it.

The thing behind me never speaks.

It doesn't need to.

Its silence says enough.

You are not enough.

You never were.

The words drip from the darkness

like thoughts in my head,

they're just there,

reminding me.

And the cruelest part?

Some nights,

when the moon hangs pale above me

and every room feels too empty,

I cannot tell

if the thing behind me is real—

or if it is simply the shape of my own fear,

following me wherever I go,

wearing my face,

whispering from just beyond my shoulder,

waiting for me to turn around.

and finaly give in.