The Secret I Carry

I keep a truth folded beneath my tongue,

quiet enough to pass as strength,

heavy enough to bend my nights.

My mind is loud in ways no one can see.

Thoughts arrive uninvited, endless as the sky,

and I try to line the world into order

just to feel a moment of peace.

Some days I look at myself

and wonder if something in me is broken,

because I feel too much,

because I fall apart at the edge of failure

and watch it spill into the lives around me.

So I stay quiet.

I hide it behind normal conversations,

behind laughter that doesn’t stay long,

afraid that if I speak it out loud

it will sound like an excuse instead of a struggle.

I fight myself in silence,

tears falling where no one can translate them,

grieving a version of me

I was never taught how to become.

I lost my sense of direction somewhere,

and the things I loved

now feel like distant shores

I may never reach again.

So I sit with myself,

trying to understand this storm inside my own head,

hoping that if I listen long enough

I might find a way through it.

And even if I keep this secret close,

even if the world never hears it,

there is still a quiet truth I am learning to hold

I have a secret deep within,

I need to love, hold and care again,

The secret digs deeper by the day,

I have a secret that no one can know.