Aarron Tuckett Poet Free verse

Did I Exist?

I was never part of it.
Not for years.
Not in the whispered secrets.
Not in the plans made in rooms I wasn’t in.
Not in the jokes that landed
before I could hear them and felt like I was one of them.

I was the pause before laughter.
The space between words.
The moment of hesitation
before someone’s eyes
moved past me—
as if I had never been there at all.

I learned how to walk without sound.
How to answer without weight.
How to take up space
without anyone realizing
something was standing in it.

I have spent my life
watching people leave rooms
without realizing
they never spoke to me.

I have nodded through conversations
that weren’t meant for me,
stood in circles
where no one noticed
they were standing closer to each other
than to me.

I waved to people
who were never waving at me.

I was never forgotten.
To be forgotten, you have to be noticed first.

I was never ignored.
To be ignored, someone has to choose
not to see you.

I was never invisible.
Invisibility is a trick,
a skill,
a decision.

I was something else.
Something worse.

A shape without a name.
A sound that never formed.
The static between radio stations.
The chair that only gets noticed
when someone needs a place to sit.

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