The Recluse's Texture

A quiet unraveling in plain sight, wrapped in silence and scars.

Artwork By: Shain Parwiz

The smile’s a thin layer of ice.
Cracks if you look too close.
Barely holds long enough for them to pass by,
brittle as old glass in a shaking hand.

They see fine.
See the shape of handling it.
They don’t see the grind.
The daily, desperate clutch to keep the edges from spilling out.
It’s like trying to hold a storm in a paper bag,
catch sand in clenched fists,
or carry water in a sieve.
The more you clench,
the faster it escapes.

Inside? Just tired.
Bone-deep, marrow-hollow tired.
No sleep, no pill, no prayer can reach that kind of quiet ruin.
You pour more water, more talk, more half-smiles
into a cracked cup,
only to watch it drain before you even set it down.

I wasn’t always this way.
God, I used to ache for connection.
Back then, you’d find me at BK Eating House.
The open-air coffeeshop, all smoke and static,
plastic chairs dragging against pavement,
cheap beer sweating on the table long before noon.
I’d sit there, chain-smoking,
eyeing strangers like they might save me without meaning to.
That place was chaos, but I clung to it.
Pretended I was part of something.
A sad drunk, puffed up with borrowed courage.
Maybe I was just desperate.
Maybe I was still human.

Back then, I leaned in.
Now I flinch.
Hard.
Like a bat out of hell.
Back then I ached to be seen.
These days, I bolt from the light.

My body keeps the score.
Joints locked, shoulders hunched for an impact that never lands.
Headaches drum out erratic rhythms.
Sleep, an ex-lover I’ve forgotten how to call.
Muscles taut with memories.
Teeth ground down to quiet powder.
In shopfront windows I catch glimpses,
skin stretched thin, lips cracked like drought,
eyes carrying thunder.
Who is this man?
This stranger with my tremor and my name.

I wear masks.
So many god damned masks.
The friendly neighbor. The dependable teacher.
The polite, nodding stranger in line for coffee.
Each one leaves a groove.
A cut.
A cost.
There’s the one I wear in public.
The one I wear at home.
And the one I wear when I’m alone.
Which isn’t a mask, not really,
but still doesn’t feel like me.

The air thickens.
It’s heavy in my lungs.
It chokes out sound,
drags in ghosts.
Every conversation is a chess match.
Every smile, a truce I didn’t sign.
It’s easier, so much easier,
to disappear inside the walls I built.
To vanish into silence.
To stay the recluse.
To be the recluse.
Maybe I always was.

Somewhere along the way the edges blurred.
Pretending wore me down.
Pretending to be solid.
Pretending to be whole.
Pretending to be anything but a raw nerve
draped in passable.

Now all that’s left is surface.
The forced smile.
The hollow ‘I’m fine’ that sticks to my tongue like burnt sugar.
Beneath that? Just texture.
Just grit.
A tangle of scar tissue trying to shape itself into skin.
I’m numb to the world,
but not the sharp edges.
Not the ones that dig.
Not the ones that twist.
Not the ones that still know how to make me gasp.

When they hit,
I want to tear this skin off.
Get free of the casing.
Some nights I lie still,
tracing veins like escape routes.
Touching the wounds I carved into my thighs to feel something,
clever enough to hide them where no one would ask.
Not in desperation,
but in resignation.
Mapping the slow unravel.
Wondering if there’s a door out.
A crack.
A dark hallway that ends in peace.

But then morning comes.
It always does.
And I’m still here.
The mask still fits.
Just tighter.
I’m still walking.
Still talking.
Still circling like a ghost
caught in its own unfinished sentence.

Maybe that’s all I am.
A memory with a pulse.
A shadow dressed in skin.
A voice with no echo
straining to be heard through the static.
A figure held up by nothing but willpower
and the refusal to drop the act completely.

And if life is still watching me
from behind the scope,
waiting for me to fall,
this will have to suffice.
These words.
This truth.
This echo in the dark.

Author’s Note:
This piece is part of the Rust and Silence series, a chronicle of how grief and silence seep into the edges of everything and how they shaped me. This isn’t meant to comfort; it’s a fragment of lived experience. If it resonates with you, I hope it feels less lonely, less quiet, where you are.

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