Jade McGlynn Poet Spoken Word

Do you hear that?

Do you hear that?
No, of course you don’t.
You don’t hear anything.
You just walk through the noise like it’s background music,
While I’m choking on it.

Every light is a blade.
Every hum is a scream.
Every whisper a storm,
tearing through my skull like it’s got something to prove.

And you?
You call it normal.
You call it everyday life.
I call it a war zone.

The walls vibrate.
The air hums.
My heartbeat sings.

You tell me:
Just tune it out
I tell you:
I can’t.
You say:
Try harder.
And I think,
You have no idea how hard I try just to exist here.

Because existing means filtering ten thousand needles of sound,
Of light,
Of motion,
Just to get through one grocery aisle.

It means clenching my jaw so the fluorescent lights don’t split me open.
It means grinding my teeth so the music in the store doesn’t crawl down my spine and burst.
It means smiling through it all,
So you don’t feel awkward.

And when I break,
When I shut down,
Melt down,
Fall down.
You call it a tantrum.
You call it overreacting.
You call it weird.

But you never call it what it is.
A mind flooded by a world that will not turn down the volume.

You ask me,
Why are you so sensitive?
And I want to scream back
Why are you so numb?

How can you walk through all this,
The buzzing
The blinking
The constant, crushing noise,
And just,
Not feel anything?

You call me fragile.
I call myself tuned.
To every flicker, every soundwave,
every wrong texture.
My senses don’t lie.
They roar.
And they tell me the truth,
This world is too much.

And still,
I keep trying.
I keep showing up.
I keep breathing through the static.
You think I’m avoiding life
No.
I’m surviving it.

Because when the air finally stops vibrating and the world slows,
I feel things you’ll never feel.
The whisper of wind through grass.
The exact pitch of morning light.
The sound of stillness that most people miss.

That’s my gift.
That’s my curse.
That’s my existence.

But don’t call me broken.
Don’t call me wrong.
Don’t tell me to get used to it.
You get used to it.

And when I cover my ears,
When I close my eyes,
When I shut the world out,
I am not retreating,
I am reclaiming.

So no.
I won’t calm down.
I won’t act normal.
I won’t smile through pain just to make you comfortable.

Because I have spent my whole life
translating my pain into your language,
And I am done apologizing for being fluent in too much.

Do you hear that?
That’s not silence.
That’s the sound of me.
FInally taking up my space  in a world that’s too loud to listen.

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