Not My Circus
I was raised on shouting,
learned early to read a room
by the angle of a slammed door,
how to live at the edge
of someone else’s storm.
I grew up a specialist
in everybody’s business,
a magnifying glass for a heart,
stitching stories from half‑heard phone calls,
scrolling Facebook like a crime scene—
searching clues, keeping score,
finger on the pulse
of every cousin’s chaos.
One day I clicked “delete account”
like cutting a wire.
Silence bloomed on my screen.
I whispered a new commandment:
Not your circus
Mind your own business
Stay in your lane
Then the new neighbors moved in downstairs.
Voices rose through the floorboards,
sharp as broken plates.
Old alarms went off in my bones—
that old reflex flaring up again.
I was halfway down the stairs,
barefoot, heart pounding.
I stopped—
I turned around,
climbed back to my own front door,
to the quiet I’ve learned to keep.
On the way, I whispered it,
like beads on a rosary:
Not your circus
Mind your own business
Stay in your lane
*
Mary Whitlow’s work has been published in Mid-Atlantic Review, Philly Chapbook Review and Virginia Writers Project.
