The Weight of Silence

I have tasted the silence, thick like rust,
Swallowed it down with the hands of a child
Who thought words were too heavy for the throat
And bruises too light to be real.
I swallowed the silence, and it made me whole—
A hollowing weight that anchored me in place,
Like the way shadows don’t dare move at noon.
I was still, but not alive.

There is a place where we go when no one sees—
Where we lie to ourselves, pretending to breathe,
Where the echo of every scream sinks into the mud,
Where the heart falls into pieces and whispers,
“This is what I deserve.”
You cannot hear it.
I cannot hear it.
But the pain stretches across the world,
Like an ancient river that was never meant to exist.

You ask me, “Why don’t you speak?”
As though silence is a choice,
A luxury of those who are free.
But silence is the language of the broken,
Of the ones who learned that words can drown,
Can pull the last breath out of a hollow chest
And leave nothing but ashes on the ground.
So I keep my mouth shut,
And in that silence, I bleed.

I bleed because the world told me
To be soft, to be kind,
But what if the softness is a trap?
What if kindness is the knife that cuts
The deepest, and we never realize
Until the blood has soaked through our veins,
Until the smile we gave turns into a scar
That no one else can see?

The skin is an illusion—
A thin veil pulled over the truth.
I have worn it for years,
Trying to hold the broken pieces inside,
Pretending I am fine.
I am not fine.

And still, the silence presses down,
Heavier now, because we never speak,
Because we never say, "I am falling apart,"
Because we never let the pain spill free.
It stays inside, rotting, festering,
Until it consumes everything,
Until nothing remains but the hollow shell
Of a person who learned too late
That survival is not living.

But maybe, in the last breath,
I will scream—
And the silence will shatter
Like glass,
And maybe that scream will be loud enough
For someone to hear.