This piece came from that place I know too well, where you put something real into the world hoping it reaches another mind that actually wants to go deeper, but instead it hits the surface and drifts back like noise. A lot of the time I am not writing for reaction, I am writing because there is something inside me that needs to go further than the speed of everything around us. The struggle in this poem is the feeling of carrying depth in a time built for quick glances, short attention, and endless scrolling, where real thought can feel almost out of place. It is that strange place of knowing your mind does not move in shallow water, yet still continuing to speak, continuing to write, because somewhere you know depth still matters, even if the world does not always stop long enough to meet it.
Abyss in a Shallow World
I crave depth,
but the world is a puddle—
ankle-deep, sun-warmed,
evaporating before I can dive.
I speak in echoes,
throwing my thoughts into the void,
waiting for a voice to catch them,
but all I hear is static—
scrolling, scrolling, scrolling past.
I was never built for their blueprints,
never fit their measured lines.
They wrote intelligence in ink,
while mine bled from the marrow,
uncontained, untamed—
a storm they locked outside.
They placed me in corners,
boxed me in where walls were thin,
never seeing that my mind
was a cathedral—
spiraling, infinite,
too vast for their dim candlelight.
I am Socrates, preaching to screens,
watching them blink,
watching them turn away.
They skim the surface,
afraid of the ocean beneath my skin.
I have loved, I have learned,
I have built algorithms from dust,
taught machines to hum my thoughts
because people cannot hear me.
I am too much, too vast,
too deep for feet that fear the abyss.
So I stay where the tide won’t reach me,
writing poems only silence understands,
searching for the others—
if they exist—
who still know how to drown.
Why does this struggle stay with me?
Where do I belong, if not in this world?
Is it me that is lost, or is it them?
If depth is a burden, why does it feel like my purpose?
Yet, there is a whisper in the storm,
a thread of gold woven through the dark—
a reminder, soft but steady:
I will keep writing, keep speaking,
keep pressing ink against the silence
until the right eyes see,
until the right souls hear.
I have been lost in this tide before,
adrift between worlds that could not hold me,
but I found my way then,
and I will find my way now.
Pain may carve its echoes deep,
but I am deeper still.
I do not shrink, I do not vanish—
I am the ocean,
vast and endless,
carrying my voice to the shore,
again,
and again,
and again.
— California Chris
