Standing Guard
Years passed.
The shield grew used to my arm
like a tool learning from the hand
that never puts it down.Readiness became my posture.
I woke alert,
slept light,
ate standing.They called discipline a virtue.
I stopped noticing
what defense was doing to me—
how much of my interior
became collateral,how many quiet thoughts
were cleared away
to make room
for the guard.Stepping aside
was rarely allowed.Reality began to feel staged—
a set built around a threat
that never arrived
and never left.On a never ending watch
I stopped expecting relief.Vigilance eats the room inside you.
Was I guarding the world?
Or was I guarding a fantasy?No enemy came.
My posture remained.I stood there so long
the ground shaped
to my stance.I don’t know
how many years
I kept guard
before realizing
no one had ever planned
to let me rest.
©2026 Samia Oldman
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
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What struck me most here is the way vigilance slowly stops being an action and becomes an identity. “Readiness became my posture” is such a precise line because it captures that moment when guarding against something is no longer something we do—it becomes the way we inhabit the world.
The image of the shield growing accustomed to the arm is equally powerful. There is an unsettling progression through the poem: first the speaker carries the shield, then the shield shapes the speaker, and finally even the ground itself has been moulded by the stance. By then, the anticipated threat almost doesn't matter. The defence has become its own prison.
I particularly loved “Vigilance eats the room inside you.” For me, that is the pulse of the entire poem. The dystopian setting gives the idea scale, but the feeling underneath it is profoundly human—the terrible cost of remaining perpetually prepared for a danger that may never arrive, while never being given permission to rest.
I'm happily subscribing because I enjoy writing that uses speculative worlds to illuminate something recognisable in our own. I also write at The Reflective State, where my Mountain Mysteries explore a different kind of unease—atmospheric, slow-burning stories in which people encounter things they cannot immediately explain. If curiosity ever leads you there, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.
What a thoughtful read. Thank you and thank you for subscribing. You're pointing out exactly the kind of slow transformation I'm trying to write into these worlds. Often the dystopia is just camouflage and the human part is always the real story.
Thanks for the reading tip! ☀️