The Quiet Above the Noise
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Below him
the world is busy
inventing importance.
Cities roar with certainty.
Every window burns
with the light of someone
trying to be seen.
Voices climb over one another
like waves breaking
against a crowded shore.
Everyone knows
exactly what should happen.
Exactly who should lead.
Exactly who is right.
The air is thick
with conclusions.
But from where he stands
the noise dissolves
into something else.
A pattern.
A restless choreography
of people mistaking movement
for meaning.
From here
the buildings look temporary.
The arguments look small.
The great roaring engine
of human urgency
looks strangely fragile—
like a machine
running very fast
with no memory
of why it started.
He watches it all.
The striving.
The shouting.
The endless performance
of certainty.
And somewhere
in the quiet space
between one breath
and the next
a different thought arrives.
Perhaps the bravest thing
a person can do
is not join the noise.
Not chase the spotlight.
Not sharpen their voice
to cut through the crowd.
Perhaps the bravest thing
is simply this—
to stand here.
To see clearly.
To refuse
the frantic gravity
of other people’s expectations.
To remain
exactly as large
or as small
as the truth inside you requires.
Below him
the world continues
its magnificent panic.
But above it
there is sky.
And in that enormous silence
something patient
and ancient
waits
for the few
who remember
that life was never meant
to be loud.
Only lived.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
When the #MeToo movement gained global attention, many voices warned that it would lead to widespread injustice—that innocent men would lose their careers, their reputations, even their lives over false accusations. Headlines, debates, and opinion pieces echoed these fears again and again. Yet the reality that followed looked very different. For many, life continued much as it had before, while the stories that had taken decades for women to tell were suddenly overshadowed by conversations about male discomfort and hypothetical danger. Nothing Happened reflects on that uneasy contrast—the gap between the loud predictions of catastrophe and the quieter, more complicated truth of what actually followed. 🖤