Deep Groan
The night stretched long, the kind that swallows time and leaves a man alone with his thoughts. The room was silent except for the slow, rhythmic ticking of the clock on the wall. Daniel sat on the edge of his bed, hands pressed against his forehead, shoulders hunched under an invisible weight. The darkness didn’t bother him—he had learned long ago that suffering has no need for light or shadow. It simply exists.
A deep groan tore from his throat, unbidden, uncontrolled. It wasn’t a cry, nor was it a scream. It was something deeper, something ancient, something that carried the weight of exhaustion, disappointment, and the quiet despair of a man who had tried and failed too many times to count. It started from his chest, rumbling through his body before escaping his lips like a dying ember from a long-forgotten fire.
This groan had been waiting to surface, buried under layers of pride and forced resilience. It had been present when he lost his job, lingering in the background as he reassured his family that things would be fine. It had sat in his throat when the eviction notice arrived, when his wife packed up the children and left for her mother’s house. It had waited—silent, patient—until now.
He leaned back, staring at the cracked ceiling, his breaths shallow and uneven. The groan had left him feeling empty, like a deflated balloon, all the air and fight drained from him. But strangely, in that emptiness, there was also a sense of relief. As if, for the first time in months, he had acknowledged the full weight of his burdens instead of pretending they didn’t exist.
The clock kept ticking, indifferent to his pain. Outside, the world carried on. Somewhere, people laughed, cars honked, life continued as if nothing had changed. And maybe, in the grand scheme of things, nothing had.
But Daniel knew something was different now. He had allowed himself to feel—fully, deeply, without restraint. He had let out the deep groan that had been caged inside him for too long. And perhaps, just perhaps, that was the first step toward something new.
