The Mallard

I see you.

Not the smile you wear like a brittle mask,

But the storm behind your eyes—

The broken glass glittering beneath your words.

Your silence isn't quiet.

It's a howl trapped in a cage,

Clawing at your throat,

Banging against the walls of a world that won’t listen.

I feel the bruise that no one sees,

Pressed beneath the layers of

“Yes, sir,”

and

“I’m fine.”

You’ve told the story before—

But not with your voice.

Your body speaks in flinches,

Your eyes in flickers.

They asked you to perform

Even when the stage was a battlefield.

They called it acting—

But you were surviving.

You sat still while monsters moved freely,

While their hands rewrote your scripts,

Their lies rehearsed better than your truth.

But I see you.

And I remember.

I remember the way it felt to be dismissed,

To offer up your soul

And receive nothing but silence in return.

I remember how they smiled—

Those polished, perfect liars.

With gold watches and silver tongues,

They twisted your light into a shadow

And called it entertainment.

But your pain is not a plot twist.

Your hurt is not a highlight reel.

Your truth is not a scandal—

It’s sacred.

And now—

Now the silence starts to crack.

Because you dared to speak.

Because we dared to listen.

Your story is not a script to be cut.

It is scripture.

It is scream.

It is the thunder before justice.

You do not cry alone.

We are many.

The unheard, the unseen, the misunderstood.

We were buried,

But we were seeds.

Now we rise—

With aching arms and trembling voices,

But voices nonetheless.

You are not a footnote.

You are not a whisper lost in lights.

You are not a puppet, a pawn, a product.

You are a flame.

And we—

We are the forest ready to burn for you,

With you,

Because of you.

Speak.

We’ll hold the silence hostage

Until your voice becomes the wind

That shatters every window they ever built

To keep you out.