Shadows in my chest  
raw and unspoken,  
panic tracing circles  
through a throat too tight to scream.

Every mirror offers a different name.  
None of them mine.

I swap faces mid-sentence,  
rotate smiles like lock combinations—  
hoping one of them fits the door  
back to who I was.

Time stutters.  
My voice comes out  
wearing someone else’s rhythm.  
Even breath feels borrowed.

“Are you okay?” they ask.  
I nod in the language  
of collapse.

It’s not pretending.  
It’s preserving.  
It’s prayer.

This is my psalm—  
not sung,  
but screamed through cracked glass  
with every rotation  
of the mask.