The Weight of Unsaid Words

There are things I never told you—

not because I didn’t feel them,

but because they were too heavy

to fit between hello and goodbye.

I held them like porcelain

in trembling hands,

afraid that if I spoke,

they’d crack the quiet

we built like a fragile truce.

Some nights, I replay our silences

like old tapes—

the long pauses filled

with almosts and maybes,

my mouth a locked room,

my heart pacing behind it.

Do you remember

that last morning in the kitchen?

You stirred sugar into your tea

while I stirred the truth into my chest

and swallowed it.

It tasted like rust and restraint.

I wanted to say

you made the world feel warmer—

like sun through a window

on a winter morning.

But instead, I folded the feeling

into my coat pocket

and walked out with the weather.

Now, I carry it all—

your name,

the goodbye that never fit right,

and the sentence that still

sits half-written

on the back of a receipt

I can’t throw away.

The words are still there,

lined up behind my teeth,

waiting for a moment

that never comes back.

Some truths don’t vanish.

They just grow roots

in the silence we chose

not to disturb.