What I Don’t Say

I don’t say

that sometimes, I dream of vanishing—

not dying, no, just

being nowhere I’m expected.

I don’t say

that your laughter stings,

when it doesn’t understand my silence,

when it erases my outline.

I don’t say

I want to scream

in whitewashed hallways,

in meetings where I vanish,

at parties where I smile without arriving.

I don’t say

that the child I was

watches me with a quiet anger.

He asks why I bent,

why I chose the suit,

the fear,

the clever word at the clever time

instead of the real word—

the one that shakes,

the one that disrupts.

I don’t say

that I once loved someone I wasn’t allowed to.

That I cried in public restrooms

watching him kiss

the one he had permission to love.

I don’t say

that I dress in disguise each morning.

And sometimes,

when I laugh too hard,

I imagine escaping

through my own mouth.

I don’t say any of this.

But the poem—

the poem doesn’t know how to lie.