Burning Beneath

I can’t help it.

The rush of thoughts, words, feelings, anger… it seeps through me, into me, around me. It’s loud, it’s constant, it doesn’t ask for permission.

I try.
I try to pull myself back, to center, to ground, to breathe into the present.
But the present keeps breaking.

News after news, faces I don’t know, lives I’ll never meet, gone.
And somehow it still reaches me, still shakes something inside me.

I keep telling myself to focus on the light.
To stay with what is good, what is here, what is real.
But the ground beneath me feels unstable, like I’m searching for something solid that keeps shifting.

My heart feels everything before my mind can make sense of it.

And yet…
I know this too:

The world is still full of hope.
Full of beautiful people, kind souls, quiet strength, unseen love.
I see them. I feel them. I am surrounded by them.

I love them.

And still, the ugliness exists beside it.
Two faces of the same coin we cannot separate.

So I will keep trying.
Not to ignore the darkness, but not to drown in it either.
To filter what I can, to hold on to what matters.

Because somewhere, in all of this,
I still believe the good will prevail.