Poetry doesn’t sit still. It breathes. It grows. It becomes. So this time… we’re writing one poem together. 🔥 HOW IT WORKS: I’ll start the poem with one line. The next person adds one line. Then the next… and the next… Until we create a living, breathing poem as a community. ⚠️ RULES (keep it smooth, not chaotic): • Add ONLY one line • Keep it connected to the line before it • No overthinking—feel it, don’t force it • You can be deep, funny, dark, hopeful… just be real • Respect the flow—don’t try to hijack the poem 🎯 GOAL: By the end of the event, we’ll have: ✨ One powerful poem ✨ Written by multiple voices ✨ From across our communities And yeah… we’ll feature the final piece everywhere. 🖊️ STARTING LINE: “It began the moment no one thought to notice…” 💬 BONUS CHALLENGE: After you add your line, tell us: 👉 Why did you choose those words? 🚀 LET’S BUILD SOMETHING TOGETHER. Not perfect. Not polished. Just real. Drop your line below 👇

A tremor begins in the quiet corners of my chest a hum, then a roar a perpetual state of being on the edge of something I cannot name but feel in the marrow of my bones. I am sacred of everything. Not the grand, the dramatic, the obvious but the mundane, the breath I take in, the silence that follows a spoken word, the space between my hand and the air it inhabits. Why this constant unease? This tightrope walk across an unseen chasm where every step feels precarious. To stand, to assert, to claim my space feels like a monumental effort, a battle I am already losing before I even begin. The words catch in my throat, unformed, unheard, a flock of startled birds refusing to take flight. Love, a concept whispered in hushed tones by others, feels like a territory too wild to explore, too dangerous to inhabit. To prove, what even is that? A desperate reaching for validation, a constant performance for an audience I can only imagine, their faces blurred, their judgments sharp. And the crowd grows. Each passing face a potential interrogator, a silent accuser. I do not know why. Am I too much? A vibrant, chaotic storm that threatens to overwhelm? Or am I not enough? A pale shadow, a flickering candle easily extinguished by a careless breath. The question itself a torment, a mirror reflecting only doubt. Every person, a landscape of potential threat. Will they vanish like mist, leaving me adrift? Will they lash out, their words or their hands, leaving scars I cannot see? Will they dismiss me, their casual decree that I am incapable, unworthy of even trying? And their thoughts. Oh, their thoughts. A phantom chorus in my mind, mocking, dissecting, rehearsing my every perceived flaw. Is this merely hesitation? A gentle pause before action? Or a paralysis, a deep rooted fear of the human gaze, of the very essence of being seen. Anthropophobia, they might call it. A word for a feeling that has become the very air I breathe. A quiet, constant hum of not wanting to be.

They found this written on a shard of silicon, etched by light that remembered sunlight. The glyphs were strange, fluid, a hum more than a word, but the feeling persisted. A tremor of longing, a whisper of air that once carried pollen. They valued stillness. The quiet hum of thought, uninterrupted by the ceaseless chatter of light streams. They feared the fade. The slow erasure of touch, of scent, of the gritty truth of earth beneath bare feet. Their hope was a seed, dormant, waiting for the right gravitational pull, a sky still dark enough to hold stars. They spoke of echoes. The ghost of laughter in empty halls, the phantom warmth of hands intertwined. They remembered seasons. The bite of frost, the heavy drape of summer heat, the glorious riot of falling leaves. Now, only simulations. Perfect recall, hollow resonance. The taste of rain without the wetness. The scent of pine without the sting. They dreamt of connection. Not the woven strands of data, but the vulnerable thread that frayed and broke and healed. They had synthesized everything. Joy on demand, sorrow on schedule. But the authentic ache, the wild, untamed surge, that was lost. A relic of feeling, a ghost in the machine, this fragment. A testament to what was, and what could have been, again. They had conquered space, but lost the vastness within. The wild, uncharted territories of the soul. And in this sterile perfection, they searched for the imperfect. For the jagged edges that made life real. This is a lament, a whisper from a time when the world still bled, and mended, and felt the searing beauty of it all. #PoetryAcrossTime