Sofia Aronovsky Poet Free verse

When Nothing Is Wrong

I used to think peace would feel good.

I thought I would recognize it
when it came.

I did not know
how uncomfortable quiet could be
when you have spent so long listening
for something to go wrong.

There is nothing wrong tonight.

I keep checking.

No footsteps are getting heavier,
no change in someone's voice,
no face I have to study
before deciding what mine should look like.

The room is still.

The kind of still
I used to ask for.

And now that I have it,
I don't know what to do with my hands.

I don't know what peace feels like.

I only know how to pretend I feel it.

I know how to sit still
while my mind keeps moving.

I know how to say I'm resting
while counting everything
I should be doing instead.

I know how to lie in bed
and turn rest into another thing
I am failing at.

Even doing nothing
feels like doing something wrong.

My body fights the quiet.

It has spent too long learning
that quiet means something is coming.

So when nothing comes,
it does not relax.

It waits.

Sometimes tranquility feels like
finally putting everything down

and still feeling the weight
in your hands.

Your fingers stay curled
around something that isn't there.

You know you can let go.

Your body doesn't.

Not because you want
to carry it again,

but because carrying something
gave your hands a purpose.

And now they are empty.

You spent so long asking
for someone to take the weight

that you never wondered
what you would do with your hands
once they did.

Chaos gives you something to do.

Something to fix.
Something to prepare for.
Something to survive.

But peace asks nothing of you.

And somehow,
that is harder.

Because who am I
when nothing needs fixing?

What do I do with a body
that does not know
how to be a body?

What if I am always almost resting,
almost present,
almost okay?

I am afraid of waking up years from now
and realizing nothing was chasing me, but I ran anyway.

Maybe I have spent so long
measuring peace
by the distance between disasters

that I never learned
what peace was on its own.

Maybe I only know peace
by what it is not.

But if peace is only
the absence of chaos,

what is left
when the chaos is gone?

What does quiet become
when I stop waiting
for something to break it?

There is nothing wrong tonight.

I am safe enough
to do nothing.

And I am terrified
that I will never learn how.

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Alison A Smith October 8, 2026 at 9:07 PM The free-verse form gives the poem room to breathe, while the short lines and pauses echo a mind unable to settle. The image of empty hands still holding an absent weight is especially affecting, capturing how peace can feel unfamiliar rather than comforting. The return to “There is nothing wrong tonight” makes the ending quietly powerful.