The Vignette Vault Of Veracity

Scroll of the Hollow Signal

I told myself: Just staying informed,
as the city bled neon across my optic lens-
a funeral parade of facts with no casket,
just loops of collapsing headlines
and static-laced screams
in twelve-second clips.

Each thumb flick,
a hemorrhage of knowing too much
and not enough.

I need to know what's going on,
like truth were a gear I could swallow,
grind down into action.
But all I did was chew
until my tongue remembered
the taste of helplessness.

This helps me unwind,
I whispered,
wires twitching in the socket of my spine.
Newsfeed ghosts in dopamine suits
whispered bedtime lies,
soft as silk and sharp as razors.

I might miss something important.
As if the world would fix itself
if I kept watching it break.

I wore anxiety like a mistcloak,
billowing in alleyways between updates,
camouflaged in chaos,
vanishing when conviction tried to grip me.

It's how I stay connected.
But every node just looped back to sorrow,
each comment thread a noose
woven from words
no one meant to mean.

I can't look away-it's too crazy.
I became the lens.
I became the scroll.
My fingerprints blurred,
identity traded for algorithms
that guessed I liked collapse.

Everyone else is talking about it.
So I listened.
So I drowned.
So I forgot how to speak
without retweeting fear.

I'll stop after this article.
But they nest like metal spiders,
one link to the next,
each web wired to a pulse
that isn't mine.

It's just background noise.
Says the addict
to the silence they're afraid to hear.

I need a distraction.
From the distraction.
From the distraction of distraction.
My echoes started echoing.

It's not like I'm doing anything else.
Except dissolving.
Except eroding in a chair
that remembers more about me
than my own mind does.

I don't trust the headlines.
But I consume them.
Ritualistically.
Like ash on a tongue in a forgotten religion.

It's not that bad if I'm learning something.
But what I learned
was how to scroll faster,
blink slower,
breathe quieter
in the presence of endless dread.

The world is falling apart.
What else can I do?
So I watched it.
And I called that empathy.

One more scroll.
I'm not addicted.
I'm aware.
Hyperaware.
Neural-punctured aware.
The kind of aware that forgets how to rest
because even rest feels like a betrayal.

This fuels my creativity.
But the only thing I created
was a digital ghost
that wears my face
and doomscrolls in my place.

The feed never ends.
But my excuse list did.
Now I watch the watchers
watching me watch myself.

And the hollow signal-
it watches too.