The First Disturbance
When nothing changes—and still something doesn’t feel right
There are moments in life that don’t announce themselves. No loud event. No clear reason. No visible shift in the world around you. Everything looks the same. And yet… something feels different. It’s hard to explain. It’s not fear. It’s not sadness. It’s not even confusion in the usual sense. It’s more like a quiet misalignment. Like your breath doesn’t land the way it normally does. Like a step feels slightly off, even though the ground hasn’t moved. You look around, trying to find the cause. But there isn’t one. The same room. The same light. The same people. Nothing has changed. And that’s what makes it unsettling. Because when something is wrong and you can point to it, you can deal with it. But when you can’t… it stays with you in a different way. At first, you might try to ignore it. Tell yourself it’s nothing. Just a passing mood. Something that will go away if you don’t pay attention to it. But it doesn’t go away. It stays quiet—but present. And slowly, you begin to understand something simple and uncomfortable: You don’t need to understand something for it to affect you. That’s where this poem lives. Not in answers. Not in conclusions. But in that first moment when something enters your experience without explanation—and refuses to leave. What you do with that moment matters. You can push it away. You can distract yourself. Or you can do something harder. You can stay. Not because you understand it. Not because you’re ready. But because something in you knows that this—whatever it is—is not accidental. Some changes don’t begin with clarity. They begin like this: Quiet. Uncertain. Impossible to explain.
Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow:21st: https://alkonda.com/2026/03/21/the-first-disturbance/
— Al Konda