The weight of a blanket

It’s not the kind of weight you measure on a scale, not pounds, not ounces— but gravity itself pressing down, a quiet suffocation sewn into the fabric of my days. I lie beneath it, the blanket that doesn’t warm, only smothers. Threads woven from silence, stitched with the ache of mornings I can’t rise into. Every fold whispers, stay here, every crease a command, don’t move, and I obey, because sometimes lifting the covers feels like lifting a mountain. The sun knocks on my window— impatient, golden, alive— but I keep my eyes closed, because light doesn’t reach where shadows have settled in my chest. This blanket knows me too well. It has memorized the shape of my surrender, the slump of my breath, the hollowed-out rhythm of a body that once believed in tomorrow. I tell myself I’ll push it off— just five more minutes, just one more thought before the next collapse. But depression is clever; it disguises paralysis as comfort, it makes prison feel like safety. So here I stay, wrapped in the heavy embrace of a fabric I never chose, a weight I cannot wash clean. And if you ask me why I’m still in bed, why I can’t just “get up” like everyone else, I’ll tell you— the truth is not laziness, not weakness, but the