Intrusive thoughts. Identity disintegration. The first sign something else is “inside.”

Not all echoes wait to be called.

For the ones who heard something speak from within
but didn’t remember giving it a name.
This is for the moment the voice stopped sounding like a thought
and started sounding like a threat.

---

This isn’t fiction. Not really.
Sometimes anxiety doesn’t whisper in your voice.
It learns it. Steals it. Repeats it back to you with just enough venom to make you wonder if you were ever real to begin with.
This is about that moment—
the one where you stop trusting your own reflection.
The moment your mind learns how to lie like it’s you.

She was brushing her teeth
when the mirror twitched—
not the glass,
but the thing inside it.

It didn’t mimic her.
It beat her to the smile.
Too wide.
Too early.
Too…familiar.
Like someone who’d lived there longer than she had.

She didn’t speak.
She thought.
But the thought came back spoken.
It laughed before she reached the punchline.
It knew the words like an understudy—
but delivered them with malice.

It wasn’t louder than her,
just quicker.
Like it had been practicing.
Like it had always been waiting
for her to be just tired enough
to let it finish her sentences.

---

You are not a burden for needing help.
You are not broken because your thoughts betray you.
You are alive — and that’s a rebellion in itself.

Thank you for reading, feeling, and staying.

© 2025 Solena Vyhra. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the poetry collection The House of Collapse.
No part of this poem, including text or visual design, may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.
For inquiries, permissions, or collaborations, please contact: solenavyhra@gmail.com

Illustration and layout by Solena Vyhra.
Typography: Special Elite (poem titles), Signature (author tag).
Published on Substack via Where Silence Becomes Ritual.