"The silence only made it louder"

I stepped into the woods to quiet the noise,
but the silence only made it louder.

Leaves whispered things I almost understood,
like half-remembered thoughts I couldn’t quite name.

 

The path bent in ways I didn’t expect,
curling back on itself like a question
I kept asking but never received an answer.

Every turn felt familiar,
yet nothing felt known.

 

My emotions moved like shadows between trees
there, then gone, then everywhere at once.

A flicker of anger in the snapping twigs,
a low ache humming in the moss beneath my feet,
and something softer, maybe hope,
filtering weakly through the branches above.

 

I tried to follow a single feeling,
to trace it like a trail worn into the dirt,
but it split, and split again,
until I stood surrounded by a thousand directions
and no clear way forward.

 

The deeper I walked, the less I could tell
if I was searching for a way out
or just somewhere to stop.

 

And yet, the woods didn’t rush me.

They let me wander,
let me be unfinished, 
let me not understand.

 

So, I kept walking,
not because I knew where I was going,
but because standing still
felt more lost than moving at all.