The poem feels like a voice speaking from inside numbness, where feeling has become too dangerous to carry openly.

Each repetition of “deadened” lands like a pulse that’s fading, a body protecting itself by shutting the lights off one by one.

The mechanical imagery suggests someone who has been reduced to function, stripped of softness, moving through motions that no longer feel like theirs.

There’s a quiet grief in the way sensation itself becomes something regretted as if pain and feeling have fused into the same threat.

Violence hangs over the poem like weather, not chosen, not dramatic, just a heaviness that has settled into the bones.

Even the murmured voices feel distant, as though connection has thinned to a faint vibration barely reaching the surface.

The smile described is almost gone a fragile remnant of humanity trying not to disappear under the weight of everything.

The chess‑piece image hints at being moved rather than moving, a life lived in reaction rather than intention.

What emerges is the portrait of someone caught between danger and numbness, trying to survive without losing the last traces of themselves.

In the end, the poem reads like a soft cry from inside a hardened shell a longing for feeling that still exists, even if buried deep.

Great word for this piece. An impact.