Perception

I wrote this piece to explore

the fragile, shifting edge between what is

and what we fear it might be.

A poem about distortion, self-doubt, and the quiet work of learning to trust your own vision again.

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Scry remains free for everyone.

If my writing resonates and you’d like to support it, you can make a pledge. It’s entirely optional but deeply appreciated…it helps me continue creating work like this.

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Perception

Perception is a trick mirror

one that keeps shifting its angles

every time I blink.

What I think I see

is never quite what’s there.

A softness becomes a threat.

A silence becomes a verdict.

A half-smile becomes a confession

I was never meant to read.

I keep forgetting that my mind

is its own unreliable narrator,

dipping every moment

into the inks of old wounds

before handing it back to me

as something “true.”

Some days I swear the world is kind

light drips gently down the walls,

people move with a tenderness

I didn’t know they had.

On other days

everything feels sharpened,

like every face is a blade

and every word is a warning.

Maybe perception is less about sight

and more about the weather inside me:

the storms I swear are happening outside

but are really just gathering behind my ribs.

I try now to pause

before believing the worst.

To check if the monster in the corner

is only a coat.

If the distance in someone’s voice

is only my hunger for closeness

echoing back at me.

If the coldness in a room

is only memory breathing too loudly.

I’m learning that clarity

isn’t the absence of distortion

it’s the moment I admit

I might be the one bending the light.

And still, I keep looking,

keep reaching,

keep trying to see the world

as it is, not as I fear it to be

hoping that one day

my eyes will finally learn

the language of gentleness

without translating it into doubt.

©️Scry

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Scry remains free for everyone.

If my writing resonates and you’d like to support it, you can make a pledge. It’s entirely optional but deeply appreciated…it helps me continue creating work like this.

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You can explore more poems from this collection here.

New ones arrive often.

Thank you for reading, for holding this poem gently, If the piece resonates, feel free to share it with someone who might find themselves in it too.