A Quiet Place for the Unspeakable

This poem is built from the things I don’t say—

the fears that curl inside my chest

like smoke that won’t rise,

the words I bury beneath polite smiles

and everyday distractions.

I am scared.

Scared that I might die before I can

build a strong enough shelter,

before I’ve mapped out every escape route,

dug a bunker deep enough

for my family to breathe without fear.

I wonder,

if I leave too soon,

who will watch the windows?

Who will stand between them

and the hands of a government

that trades truth for control,

medicine for mandates,

peace for punishment?

I am scared

they’ll be left behind in a world

that treats freedom

like contraband,

a world where hunger has no sympathy,

and justice wears a mask

it doesn’t remove.

Sometimes,

when I see a wreck on the road,

my breath leaves before I can call.

I dial—heart in throat—

just to hear their voices,

to count them silently like beads

on a rosary of survival.

They don’t know.

They don’t know how often I wake

in the middle of the night

counting canned goods,

tracing news headlines

like a hunter searching for signs

of approaching danger.

I want to hide them

like precious books

in a time of fire,

wrap them in silence,

teach them to breathe

without being seen.

But I know

you can’t outrun a world

falling apart at the seams.

So I sit with this terror,

this raw, unwelcome guest—

and I write,

building poems

from the rubble of my fears,

hoping that truth,

even whispered,

can become a kind of shelter.