I built my silences carefully,
layer over layer,
like mortar covering a wall that cracks in every rain.
You call it secrecy,
but it's only way out.
There are rooms inside me,
I keep dark on purpose.
I tell myself it's safer without light.
Every smile is a cipher-
soft, misleading, half-true,
made to protect what I no longer show.
If you listen closely,
you'll hear the echoes
of all I never said ..
the way longing hums under restraint,
the way a bruised wick retreats from the flame.
I am not hiding from love,
only from its tall promises;
its glory.
its panacea.
If my heart seems unreadable,
know that it is not locked,
only covered in a camouflage
I have not yet dared to unmask.
Still, some nights,
the hidden things move.
They press against the walls,
they whisper that survival is not the same
as feeling alive.
On those nights, I open the door ajar
just wide enough
for one fragile feeling to slip through.
One day,
I might trust an intruder enough
to draw every curtain back.
Until then, I guard the dark rooms,
And its fragile artifacts;
but carrying a small, flickering hope
that someone will hear the music behind the door
and choose to knock gently.