Humanity
The Silence Between Tears
The day fell like a crumpled note,
tossed into the wastebasket of time,
a whisper, a cough, a footstep fading,
the sound of nothing,
the echo of things left unsaid.
I walked through streets without pavement,
over stones that remembered me not.
Each window was an eye, unblinking,
a stare of glass indifferent to grief.
The wind pressed against my cheek,
not a caress, not a blow,
just a presence,
like the weight of a name no longer called.
I did not weep, though my heart did,
a different kind of pain,
a betrayal of the body's rituals.
Tears demand permission,
but silence sneaks in, unbidden,
settles between the ribs,
lodges behind the throat,
a ghost pressing against the edges of breath.
And so the hours unravelled,
like a frayed sleeve in a forgotten coat,
threadbare, loose at the seams,
and still I walked,
searching for the shape of sorrow,
in the absence of rain.
Night came in its sensible shoes,
soft-footed, practical, gray.
No stars, no moon,
only the hum of a world
that did not know I was breaking.
I sat on the edge of the bed,
hands resting like relics on my knees.
And the heart wept again,
as it always does,
quietly,
where no one can see.
