I refuse to exist in a world
where pain is a crime,
where sorrow is exile,
where wounds must be hidden—
smothered beneath polite smiles,
smoothed over with hollow assurances.

I ache beneath the weight of silence,
of anger locked behind my teeth,
of grief swallowed whole,
its edges growing sharper in the dark.

Sleep offers no mercy;
waking delivers no peace.
Some days, I wish to be nothing
but an echo in the quiet,
a body swallowed by slumber,
untouched, unseen.

They mourn compassion
in the same breath
that they condemn its presence.

All I see is indifference—
a world that clasps its hands over its ears,
that calls silence wisdom
and apathy survival.

And if I scream—
if I tear open the sky—
will the void still
mock me back?

—T.A.