Things You Can’t Say Out Loud

Things You Can’t Say Out Loud

(A Poem of Unspoken Truths)

I. The Weight of Silence

There are words that live inside the ribs,

caged like birds with broken wings—

they flutter, restless, against the bone,

but never find the sky.

You learn to swallow them early,

to let them dissolve like salt on the tongue,

to press them into the hollows of your cheeks

where no one will see them swell.

Some truths are too sharp for daylight,

too heavy for the air to carry—

so you bury them in the quiet,

where they grow roots in the dark.

II. The Lies We Wear

You smile when they ask, *How are you?*

and the answer is a blade,

but you say, *Fine, thanks—just tired,*

and the blade stays sheathed.

You laugh when they tell the old jokes,

the ones that taste like rust,

because silence would be a confession,

and you’ve already confessed too much.

You nod when they preach their certainties,

their *this is how the world works,*

while your hands remember the cracks in it,

the places where the light leaks through.

III. The Love That Has No Name

You don’t say how your heart

is a house with too many rooms,

how some doors stay locked

even to you.

You don’t say how love sometimes

is a wound that won’t close,

how you press on it just to feel

something real.

You don’t say his name,

or hers, or theirs—

how it lingers in your throat

like a prayer you’ve forgotten.

IV. The Rage That Has No Voice

You don’t scream when they take,

and take, and take—

when they call it *giving,*

when they call it *law.*

You don’t tell them you see

the hunger in their hands,

the way they carve the world

into pieces they can own.

You don’t say you’ve counted the dead,

that you know their names,

that you dream in the color of their blood—

because grief is a language

they refuse to understand.

V. The Fear They Can’t Admit

You don’t whisper, *I’m afraid,*

even when the night is a mouth

and the shadows have teeth—

even when the future is a wall

and you’re running out of time.

You don’t say the world is burning,

that you smell the smoke in the wind,

that you hear the crackling laughter

of those who lit the match.

You don’t ask, *Will we survive this?*

because the answer might be *no,*

and some words, once spoken,

cannot be unspoken.

VI. The Hope You Hide

But sometimes—

sometimes in the quiet,

when the world isn’t looking,

you let yourself imagine:

A day when the cage opens.

A day when the words take flight.

A day when the silence shatters

like glass underfoot,

and every buried truth

finally breathes.

(And maybe, just maybe,

that day is closer

(than you think.)