I Didn’t Say That Out Loud

In the quiet corners of a crowded café,

where my coffee grows cold untouched,

there’s a riot of words that never made the trip

from mind to mouth —

silent fireworks in a jar,

locked tight with rusty lids of fear.

I didn’t say that out loud:

I am tired of pretending to be the loudest whisper in the room,

because my real voice sounds like a cracked mirror—

fractured, jagged, reflecting shards of a person I don’t recognize.

I didn’t say that out loud:

Sometimes I want to scream so loud that the sky itself shudders,

but instead, I swallow it whole,

a bitter pill lodged in my throat,

digested slowly in the darkness of my own silence.

There is a secret conversation between my heartbeat and the moon,

a confessional without priests or judgment,

where I admit to shadows that nobody sees—

like the time I wanted to walk away and never come back,

but stayed because guilt had me by the collar.

I didn’t say that out loud:

I dream of disappearing into the pages of a book,

where every unsaid word is a universe,

and the ink is my silent rebellion,

dancing across lines no one reads aloud.

I didn’t say that out loud:

I am afraid of being forgotten,

because forgetting means I never mattered,

and that truth is too heavy for my trembling hands.

Quiet rage lives beneath my skin—

a volcano I dress in smiles and polite nods,

erupting only in the privacy of my mind,

where no one can see the ash settle.

I didn’t say that out loud:

I want to tell you everything—

the good, the bad, the ugly,

but my lips are prisons,

and silence is the warden I obey.

I didn’t say that out loud:

I am still learning how to love the broken parts of myself,

the ones that scream for kindness in a language no one understands,

the parts that beg for mercy in mirrors,

and the ones that laugh alone in the dark.

In the silence, I am a ghost with a thousand unfinished stories,

each one a whisper that never dared to bloom,

a secret garden locked behind the walls of my own making.

So here it is—

the poem you’ll never hear me say,

the confessions I carry like stones in my pockets,

the dreams I whisper only to the night,

the fears that live in the silence between my words.

I didn’t say that out loud—

but now, maybe,

you’ll hear me.