Hypervigilance

I learned safety early
Not as comfort but as calculation
Scan the horizon and note the exits
Carry backups for the backups
As competence sharpened by uncertainty
Hypervigilance looks like responsibility
But a body that never quite sits down
I learned to hear danger before it spoke
Feel the floor for looseness
This kept me alive
It paid the bills.
It built buffers thick enough but never deep enough
Even now the mind still patrols
The problem is not that it watches.
The problem is that it forgets
to stand down
Now that safety is no longer built by tightening the grip
But by trusting the ground to hold without inspection
I am learning this slowly
Day after uneventful day
Eventually even the guard learns to sit
— 14/01/26