Unburdened

I heard you wanted to tell me something, but you were too afraid to even think it. To think it would be to know it, and to know it would mean unknowing everything you thought you knew about yourself.

That’s okay, you don’t have to say it. It’s written in neon above both our heads. To me it’s a bright ribbon of truth. To you it’s a buzzing banner of shame that burns particularly hot at bedtime.

I heard your conscience went digging through conversations we didn’t have and found far too many things you should have said. I heard you ran like hell away from them, but once unearthed they stuck to you like burs. They must make it hard to run, and dance, and play.

I heard you enlisted an army of justifications to campaign for you—to go to war against the knowledge that you could have done better. It’s a ragtag army, full of weak excuses and paltry pretext. It won’t protect you.

I heard all of this in the places you don’t even speak—in the rooms you never enter. In the quiet moments of admitting to failure, to fear. In the intimate space between two dropped masks. Your absence there screamed at me again and again, telling me who you really are, until I had no choice but to believe it.

I doubt—even if you tried—that I could hear you now, over the noise of what you didn’t say, when you should have said it.