The Crystalline Exile

The morning clock, a punctual, brass-plated thief, 

Had stolen the night and left behind the Blueprint of the Day -

A ribbon of tired concrete where the commute performed its grief, 

And every small talk was a debt the hollow mind must pay. 

The cubicle, a Sentinel of Stale Air, waited, vast and gray, 

Its fluorescent ceiling, a cold, uncaring sun. 

And I, the tenant of this tedious decay, 

Felt the internal reckoning that had just begun.

The inciting trigger was a silence, sharp and deep, 

After the forced farewell of a digital voice: 

A vacuum where the world had promised rest or sleep, 

A vast, Predatory Velvet making me rejoice 

In nothing but the terror of its sudden, perfect quiet. 

Here, the noise was not in the ring, but in the void. 

The city’s hum, a thousand needles, started a slow riot, 

And the self I was became dangerously alloyed.

Deep in the chest, behind the fragile, breathing bone, 

Rested the weight: the Crystalline Burden. 

It was not granite, but a structure built of dread, digitally sown, 

A silent, growing glacier, the accumulated word and worry. 

It held the residue of every screen, every unspent hurry, 

A perfect, hollow Chalice of Accumulated Strain. 

It was meant to be untouched, a secret architecture of pain, 

For if it broke, the self beneath would bleed out, instantly slain.

The Hours, personified, stalked like judges in the room,
Their robes were woven from the clock’s incessant tick. 

The Streetlight’s Gaze, outside the glass, pierced through the gloom, 

And became a harsh, cold spotlight, demanding what I conceal. 

My hands, engaged in signing documents, felt thin and weak, unreal, 

As they tried to cradle the internal, fragile frost. 

I whispered silent treaties to the Desk’s Unfeeling Steel, 

Bargaining to keep the inner landscape from being lost.

But the Crystalline Burden grew warm, vibrating with the strain,
The edges of the digital noise were sharpening the pane.
A single, perfect crack—a hairline scar of doubt -
Appeared where the mind had tried to keep the frantic world out.
The Anxiety, now unbound, was a River of Molten Glass,
Flowing behind the eyes, reflecting the mundane task.
I typed a sentence flawlessly; the mind continued to mask
The tragic, beautiful shattering taking place inside the flask.

The Burden did not explode; it dissolved into the air, 

Leaving no sound, no shard, no evidence of its despair. 

It was not a breakdown, but a profound, geometric shift: 

The Self was quietly vacated, given up as a sacrificial gift. 

I stood, gathered my things, nodded at the Sentinel’s cold stare, 

And spoke the necessary pleasantries with perfect, measured tone. 

But the person walking home was an Echo in the Chair -

A flawless actor, utterly, tragically alone, 

Separated by a breath from the reality they had known.

- Khushi Kaul