Literature
Test Of Clarity
You read this thinking you are outside.
Don’t worry, that’s normal.
That’s always how it begins.
You tell yourself: “I’m reading a text. I am stable. I am sane.”
You place yourself on the right side of the glass.
You observe.
That’s exactly what I was doing too.
At first, we believe that mental clarity is a natural state.
Something obvious.
A straight line.
Solid ground beneath our feet.
But tell me, my gentle passing reader,
at what precise moment did you verify
that the ground was not simply a habit?
IT SOUNDS STUPID, right ; yes, but maybe.
The fall does not begin with a crisis.
It begins with a useless question.
One thought too many.
A tiny crack in the story you tell yourself about who you are.
Why does this idea keep coming back?
Why does this detail bother me?
Why am I the only one noticing it?
And above all:
why do the others seem so unconcerned?
You call it “ruminating.”
I used to call it thinking.
Paranoia is not an explosion.
It is a methodical
