Poem: When Did the World Stop

When did the world stop caring—
was it loud, or was it slow?
Did it shatter like a warning,
or fade too soft to notice so?

Was it buried in the headlines,
numbers scrolling, faces blurred?
Did we trade our sense of wonder
for the safety of a word?

Maybe it slipped out in silence
between “I’m fine” and “I don’t know,”
in the space we stopped asking
what we used to need to show.

Maybe caring grew too heavy,
like a weight we couldn’t hold,
so we set it down in pieces
just to make it through the cold.

Or maybe—just maybe—it’s hiding,
not gone, just quiet, thin, and worn,
waiting in the smallest kindness,
in the way we still mourn.

Because I’ve seen it in strangers,
in a glance that chose to stay,
in hands that reached out gently
when the world looked the other way.

So perhaps the world didn’t stop caring—
perhaps it’s just hard to see,
a flicker under all the noise,
still alive in you and me.

Thank-you for Reading.

Brenda Marie