If Tears Were Enough

If tears were enough,

I would have fought harder.

I would have cried longer.

I would have screamed louder.

You would have known.

It would have been obvious—easier.

You would have seen my eyes glaze

and my hands shake each time their voices grew sharper.

But heartache is born to obliterate.

Trauma is not obvious or easy.

It’s destructive and messy.

How can I say to you

that I’m completely and utterly destroyed,

chaotic, and scared? How?

How can one soul tell another something

that the mouth can’t express,

that the mind can’t comprehend,

that the heart can barely survive?

The face can only mimic what the soul feels—

that’s why tears fall.

The problem with pain is that it has no bounds,

no logic. It doesn’t live in this world—

it lives in ours. In mine.

It’s built from within,

so how can tears ever be enough?

I wish I lived in a world where tears were enough.

It would have been easier then.

I would have been normal then.

If tears were enough,

I would have cried my eyes out

and screamed agony till they saw

that they didn’t leave scars on me—

but in me.

That each time they ignored my screams,

the gash only hollowed me deeper.

Sadly, their claws run deep.

So deep, no tears could ever pull them out.

My sister told me to write, for once, about my pain.

But my pain has always lived in the shadows,

in the lines of each poem.

My pain is subtle—

just like my trauma.

It lives in the details. In the unspoken.

In the murmurs.

In the whispers of my glances.

And if tears were enough,

it would have been obvious.

But it wouldn’t have been my pain.

Maybe that’s why I’m not much of a crier—

but a writer.

I see the horror of my pain.

I see the consequences of the trauma—

its newest face, always changing—

checking which villain is visiting today.

But I was born into silence,

conditioned into quiet.

So I take my pen—

not to write, but to bleed.

I stab myself with each word,

hoping this time,

the ink on these white pages—

my blood on these papers—

will stain loud enough to be seen.

And if tears were enough—

if tears were really enough,

you would have known.

You would have heard

how loud my pain really is,

how misery created a home inside my being.

But like I told you:

my pain isn’t meant for the eyes,

but for the heart—

for the broken souls.

For those who lost the ability to see,

blinded by how much they saw,

but whose hearts are still too fragile

to stop them from feeling.

These tears of mine glide through my hands

as fast as it takes for me to erase them—

and for people,

for my people,

to ignore them.

And that’s exactly why

my tears will never be enough.