The Words I Never Dared To Say

There are things I have carried for years
that have never known the comfort of a sentence.

I have tried to name them,
but every word I find
seems to take something away from their meaning.

How do I describe a sadness
that doesn’t always feel like sadness?
Or the weight of remembering
something I cannot bring myself to revisit?

There are mornings I wake up
with conversations already taking place in my head.
I find the words, arrange them carefully,
only to watch them disappear
when I am finally alone with a blank page.

There are apologies I owe myself,
dreams I pretend not to miss,
and truths I have folded so many times
that I can barely recognise their original shape.

I have called certain things acceptance
when perhaps I had simply grown tired
of explaining why they hurt.

And I have mistaken silence for peace
because I did not know what else to call it.

Sometimes, I wish I could open my chest
and let everything speak for itself.
Let the things I cannot explain
find their own way into the world.

Perhaps then,
I would not have to keep searching
for words that never seem large enough.

But here I am,
still translating feelings into sentences,
watching parts of their meaning disappear
with every attempt.

I have so much to say.

Yet, sometimes,
the only honest thing I can offer
is silence.