Why Are You So Quiet?
They ask
Why are you so quiet?
as if silence doesn’t scream in softer tongues.
As if the museum of my feelings
hasn’t been echoing in empty halls for years.
I write in the language of sighs,
in pauses between breaths,
in the trembling hush before sleep.
My heart is a library of poems no one checks out
they skim the titles, never the verses.
They say I always seem fine
but they don’t see the nights I break quietly,
folding myself into the dark like pages no one reads.
They see the calm, but not the storm I walk through
just to arrive with a smile.
I have spoken in every way I know
through steady hands that hold,
eyes that linger too long,
smiles stitched at the seams of breaking days.
I have shouted through kindness,
cried through metaphors,
bled in lowercase letters on empty pages.
They hear the laughter,
but not the echo of what I never said.
My silence hums like a violin string stretched thin,
trembling, but never breaking.
Perhaps they’re just too loud to hear
the storm inside me.
They say I’m quiet
but they’ve never seen how I weep in the presence of art,
or fall in love with the way sunlight lingers on the rim of a teacup.
They call me peaceful,
without knowing I wage wars with my own thoughts
just to sit still.
They say I’m strong.
But I’ve broken
more times than I can count
and still came back
with flowers in my hands.
I am quiet, yes.
But my silence has depth, has memory.
Sometimes, I speak in metaphors
because it’s safer
than telling people what I truly feel.
Because not everyone
knows how to hold
what comes out of a quiet heart.
My quiet isn’t hollow.
It’s a garden I water
when no one is looking.
It’s a soft blanket I wrap around thoughts
too delicate to place in anyone’s hands.
And if one day, I ever speak the fullness of me
the wonder, the wounds
the weight of every unspoken truth
the world will not know
what to do with the sound.
