it comes more often now,
the shaking,
the crying,
the desperate search for air.

something small,
something others may laugh off,
cracks me wide open,
it hurts,
God, it hurts,
to drown in my own chest.

and still,
I can't cry in front of anyone.
too scared they'll see me break,
so I break
alone.

I start to say—
no, never mind.

It sits heavy here,
but if I spill it,
everything tips,
so I smile instead.

I write the first line of a confession,
pause, erase,
replace it with something brighter,
something safer.

There’s always a cliff
just past my words.
I walk near the edge,
toes curled on stone,
then,
stop.

You’ll never know
how close I came
to telling you everything.

It isn't a crime,
this ache of being left behind,
but it feels like one,
like I'm guilty of wanting more.

Three voices weave a tapestry
bright and endless,
and I smile as if
my thread is still stitched in.

But the laughter still echoes without me,
and I sit quietly,
a ghost in the group photo,
a shadow at their table.

I mute their chatter,
not because I hate them,
but because I can't keep watching
a world where I am fading.

They did't do me wrong.
Heck,
They didn't even notice.
And maybe that's the sharpest cut,
to be nothing worth wounding.

There is a star I trace each night,
its glow not meant for me,
yet I keep it in my sky,
as if my watching makes it brighter.

I walk a garden not my own,
hands aching to touch the roses,
but I leave them untouched,
thorns reminding me
they bloom for another.

Some loves are like glass,
you see straight through,
you dare not hold,
for fear it was never yours to begin with.

So I become the silence,
the keeper of a story unfinished,
guarding what was never mine,
with a tenderness
that no one will ever see.

In the cathedral of laughter, I parade,
my voice a chime of borrowed delight,
while behind the tapestry of smiles
my marrow hums with unspoken fractures.

Every gesture, rehearsed, lacquered, pristine,
an ornate façade into a carnival of colors
so no one notices the monochrome beneath.

Yet in the hush of solitude,
when chandeliers of silence flicker,
the true self, archaic, wounded,
emerges like a ghost aching for
recognition.

I am both playwright and phantom,
conducting a symphony of counterfeit joys;
an actor in perpetual exile,
haunted by the memory of my untarnished self.

And still, the masquerade continues,
each morning an invocation of artifice,
each night a requiem of the truth
I am too terrified to exhume.

Im glad they buy this version of me,
the polished one,
the smiling one,
the one who fits neatly
into the outline of “fine.”

They believe it so easily.
Why wouldn’t they?
It’s brighter,
lighter,
easier to hold
than the truth.

The truth is,
the real me was shelved
along time ago,
left to collect dust in the dark.

Now I wake each morning,
slip on this costume
like it’s second skin,
play the part until curtain call,
and no one notices
that behind the mask
my face is still wet
from last night’s crying.