Orbiting Thoughts
She had always felt that her thoughts never moved in straight lines. Not from one point to another. They circled instead— around something that had no name.
Inside her existed an invisible center, a silent core around which every thought, memory, fear, and desire revolved. They never drew closer. They never drifted away. They simply remained in orbit.
At night, when the city fell silent, she became more awake than ever. Her eyes fixed on a place that did not exist. As if red planets were rising and setting inside her mind. Each one carried a weight: an unmade decision, an unspoken sentence, an unfinished love.
She knew that if even one of these thoughts were to break its orbit, everything would collapse.
So she did not allow it.
She kept her thoughts arranged like celestial bodies. Each given its distance. Each given its time. Each given its silence.
Sometimes, one orbit would tremble. Then a quiet pain would coil through her chest. Not sharp enough to become a scream, not faint enough to be ignored.
She had learned how to live with that trembling.
People thought she was calm. Balanced. Even cold.
No one knew that behind this stillness, an entire universe was in motion.
One day, she asked herself: “What would happen if I stopped thinking? If I let these orbits fall apart?”
The answer was terrifying. Because stopping meant falling. And falling meant facing the core.
She was not ready.
So once again, she allowed her thoughts to circle— around a memory whose name she had forgotten, around a pain without form, around her truest self.
The red surrounding her was not a sign of fire. Nor of warmth. It was a sign of pressure— the force that kept her thoughts in orbit.
Sometimes she imagined that if someone could see inside her, they would find a small galaxy with wounded planets and a sun that never gives light.
But she knew this as well: as long as her thoughts kept circling, she was still alive.
Orbiting Thoughts is the story of a mind that does not collapse because it never comes to rest.
And perhaps the most beautiful and the most painful form of survival is exactly that.
