The Silent Toll

On the quiet theft of our hours, and the lease they put on our minds.

Most mornings.
It’s the same.

Alarm clock cuts through the dark.
I drag myself toward another day
bending my back
to keep someone else’s dream standing.

The paycheck is the leash.
Survival disguised as loyalty.

It’s not just the hours they take.
It’s the marrow.
The pulse.
The way the screen eats my vision
until I forget what my own voice sounds like.

The coffee’s gone cold.
The air hums with fluorescent fatigue.
You can hear it in everyone’s voice—
that low, tired hum of borrowed time.

People call it burnout.
I call it theft.

It’s not emotional.
Not exactly.
It’s energetic.

Like some vampire got clever
and stopped asking permission.
Like it learned
how to siphon whole days
through a Wi-Fi connection.

My blood doesn’t even hit the floor.
It just vanishes
into their metrics.
Their reports.
Their bottom line.

And I don’t say anything.
None of us do.

Because to speak up
is to risk being cut off
from the very thing we need to keep breathing—
money.
Rent.
Food.
Survival.

They know that.
That’s the choke chain.
That’s the bargain.

So we sit there.
Quiet.
Pretending our ribs aren’t collapsing in.
Pretending the silence isn’t screaming.

The other night,
Where Is My Mind came on.
That crooked bass line.
Black Francis spitting the question
like he’s already lost the answer.

It hit me in the chest.
That’s exactly what it feels like.
Floating.
Numb.
Half-awake in someone else’s nightmare.

And yet—
sometimes—
I catch a flicker.

The sound of my own breath
when the laptop finally shuts.
The way the night air
feels like it remembers me.

A moment
where time doesn’t belong to them.
A glimpse
of what could be.

Because the cruelest truth is,
my mind isn’t lost.
It’s leased.

And some days,
I swear
I can feel the key
in my pocket.

// Scorpio Veil