The Silence You Gave Me
You taught me to whisper
Before I could speak,
To fold my words, tuck them
Underneath the heavy rug
Where dust gathers but never dares
To rise.
Your voice was thunder,
Not a sound to be questioned,
Its echoes swallowed the room,
And in that shadow, I grew
Like a plant beneath thick fog.
My roots were tangled,
Reaching for light
I couldn't see, but felt—
A warmth just beyond
Your grasp.
But what you didn’t know
Is that silence, when bent long enough,
Breaks.
And now, I am not the child
That whispered prayers to invisible gods
For permission to be heard.
I am the thunder.
I am the storm.
My voice has cracked the sky,
Split the earth you thought was firm.
It spills out of me now,
Fierce and unapologetic,
Every word once swallowed
Now sharp as glass.
I am no longer afraid
Of the reverberation,
No longer ashamed
Of the space I take,
The sound I make.
What was once your rule,
Your doctrine of silence,
Is now just an old book
I choose not to read.
I write my own pages,
In ink too bold to fade.
You cannot mute me anymore.
I have a voice,
And it has wings.
You, the keeper of quiet,
Are now but a distant noise,
A faint hum in the background
Of my symphony.
The silence you gave me
Has bloomed into fire,
And I speak with the flame
You never saw coming.
Each time I tried to speak,
To push air into my lungs,
You were there, a silhouette
Of all I couldn’t say,
Shaping my tongue with the chill
Of your disapproval.
You didn't know
That silence grows
Not just like a wound,
But like a storm held in—
A pressure,
A force.
For years, I carried it,
This weight of words unsaid,
Shaped into a script I memorized:
"Don’t speak too loud."
"Don't think too hard."
"Don’t be too much."
You pressed those lines into my palms
Like braille I couldn't unfeel.