Shattered Glass and Silent Screams

The loudest thing
that ever happened to me

made no sound at all.

No explosions.
No sirens.
No dramatic collapse.

Just one quiet crack

and then another,

until I realized
I had been living
inside a stained-glass version
of myself,

beautiful enough from a distance,

held together
entirely by fractures.

People always ask
when everything fell apart.

As if destruction
keeps a calendar.

It doesn't.

It slips poison
into ordinary Tuesdays.
It smiles through photographs.
It pours coffee,
answers emails,
says, "I'm fine,"
with alarming professionalism.

I became an expert
at sweeping up pieces
without bleeding
where anyone could see.

There should be Olympic medals
for pretending.

I'd have at least silver.

Gold requires sleeping.

My screams
learned impeccable manners.

They stood quietly in line,
waited their turn,
and never interrupted
the conversations
that mattered more
than my survival.

Somewhere along the way,
my voice stopped asking
to be heard.

It started apologizing
for existing.

Funny,
how pain becomes polite
when it has overstayed
its welcome.

I have mistaken numbness
for peace.

Mistaken survival
for living.

Mistaken silence
for strength.

The heart
is a terrible liar.

It will tell you
you're healed

while secretly
keeping every shard
filed under
"Just in case."

I still carry them.

Tiny splinters
of every goodbye,
every betrayal,
every version of myself
that broke
trying to keep
someone else whole.

You cannot hug people
without eventually
finding their fingerprints
on your broken pieces.

That seems unfair.

So does rain,
but here we are.

Some nights
I imagine gathering
every fragment
I've lost.

Every abandoned dream.

Every unsent goodbye.

Every word
I swallowed
to keep the peace.

I wonder
if I'd recognize
the person
they once belonged to.

Or if she'd look at me
with unbearable kindness
and say,

"You survived.

I was never asking you
to stay unbroken."

Maybe healing
isn't becoming whole again.

Maybe it's learning
that cracked glass
still catches sunlight,

and broken things
are often the only ones
honest enough

to let the light
pass through.

So if you hear nothing when you look at me,

don't mistake the silence for emptiness.

Some screams become so ancient,

they stop sounding like fear.

They become the rhythm of a heart  that refused to stop.