Keywords: schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations, thought insertion, patient perspective, mental health, poetic narrative

Step inside the mind haunted by voices which do not exist, where thoughts are borrowed, stolen, or leaked, and reality feels fragile. This poem conveys the fear, isolation, and confusion of living a life with schizophrenia, inviting readers to witness the invisible battles that sufferers endure.

They tell me the walls can hear,
so I speak softly,
afraid my thoughts will leak
through the cracks of the room.

I once owned my mind,
now it rents itself to phantoms,
shadowed guests move furniture in there,
rearranging memories I never invited,
redecorating my reality.

The voices come gently at dawn,
like rain whispering secrets;
on other nights, they crash like storm winds
accusing, commanding, laughing
at secrets only they know.

They say no one’s there
but how can they not hear
the man inside my skull,
reading my prayers aloud,
twisting them into riddles I cannot solve?

Silence, I sought it once,
but they seeped in,
crowding every corner
with words which were never mine.

The doctor hands me a pill,
promising calm;
not seeing how the tablet glows,
humming my name before I let it in.

I have become a ghost among them,
for my thoughts escape me
and speak before I can,
or so it seems.

Perhaps I think too loudly,
or perhaps the air
has learned my language.

Author: Aakriti Arora (mail.aakritiarora@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6354-014X), Symbiosis Medical College for Women, Symbiosis International University, Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA.

Conflict of Interest: None declared                                                                                                                                                                                         Funding: None

To cite: Arora A. When the voices breathe my name. Indian J Med Ethics. Published online first on July 1, 2026. DOI: 10.20529/IJME.2026.041

Submission received: October 10, 2025

Submission accepted: June 1, 2026

Manuscript Editor: Rakhi Ghoshal

Copyright and license
©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2026: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits only noncommercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.