Too Much

They tell me to speak with more feeling,

as if feeling isn’t the very thing undoing me.

As if this stillness is emptiness—

when in truth, it is overflow.

I do not suffer from scarcity.

I suffer from abundance.

An ocean with no shoreline,

a tide that never recedes.

These emotions do not clock out.

They follow me from room to room,

curl at the edge of my bed,

echo in the pipes,

knock softly behind my ribs.

There is no sign to hang that reads closed for repairs.

Even prayer cannot quiet their footsteps.

I search for clarity—some golden path

through the tangled corridors of my mind—

but sorrow crowds the doorway.

It fogs the glass.

It steals the color from my face

until I barely recognize the woman reflected back.

Sadness arrives like weather with intent—

violent, electric, certain.

So I brace myself.

I try new conversations, new tastes, new rooms,

anything to break the drought

before I forget what joy once tasted like.

I knew something was shifting

when the sunrise felt like a countdown

instead of a promise.

When hope seemed naïve

and everything carried a warning label.

I am exhausted from wrestling myself—

from the relentless chorus of “just be happy.”

If it were that simple, I would have chosen it already.

So when I am quiet,

understand that I am balancing glass.

One more surge, and it might shatter.

But perhaps breaking is not the end.

Perhaps it is the sound of a ceiling giving way—

and a woman rising through it,

finally unafraid of her own thunder.