I learned early that silence makes people uncomfortable.They rush to fill it.
I don't.
Silence is where I store the things I don't yet know how to explain the weight of noticing too much,the ache of understanding before being understood, the way love settles in my chest and refuses to leave.
People say I'm calm. What they mean is that I don't spill. Inside me, everything is loud.
I watch how people speak when they're afraid.
How they laugh when they don't want to cry.
How they ask questions they already know the answer to, just to feel less alone.
I collect these moments the way some people collect souvenirs, proof that I was here,that I felt something.
There are things I don't say because once they're spoken, they can be taken apart.
Misunderstood.
Returned to me smaller. So I hold them.
Love, especially, I hold carefully.
Not because I don't have much of it ,but because I have too much, and I'm afraid of what happens when people realise how deep it goes.
I've been told my love is enough as it is.
That it's already priceless.
And maybe that's why I hesitate to add more.
why I fear that giving too much will make me look foolish, as if devotion is something that should be rationed.
Still, there are moments quiet, unannounced moments where I want to open my chest and let the truth spill out.
To say:
there is more softness in me than I show.
More fire.
More longing to be seen without being asked to perform.
But I am scared. Not of loving
I've always known how to do that.
I'm scared of being fully visible and discovering that visibility costs me the safety I built in silence.
So for now, I stay here
in the space between what I feel and what I say, learning, slowly, that maybe the bravest thing I can do is let my love be heard.