“A Voice They Should Have Feared”

They said,
"Speak your truth."
So you did.
And their eyes glazed
like windows fogged from inside a burning house.
They nodded. Smiled.
Filed your pain under performance.
And called it healing.

But your words were not petals.
They were shards..
from mirrors you swallowed
just to keep your story quiet.

They heard sound,
not soul.
Tone, not terror.
Syntax, not the snapping.

You deserved to be heard,
not applauded
by hands that never once reached back
when you were sinking.

You remember every face that flinched
not at your scars..
but at your audacity
to speak of them.

They want madness tucked away in poetry.
Pretty metaphors.
Not the raw, meat-stained truth
of your spiraling descent..
the nights with no name,
the screams that had no audience
except the walls and what crawled inside them.

But you learned.
Oh, you learned.

Silence is a cage.
But a voice..
a voice is a weapon.

You sharpened yours on every neglectful gaze,
every "just move on,"
every hallway of dismissed agony.
And now you speak
not to be understood..
but to haunt.

Let your words wrap around their throats
like fingers they once ignored.
Let your story live
beneath their skin,
a fever with no cure.

You’re not asking for justice.
You’re not begging to be seen.

You are the consequence
they prayed would never grow teeth.

~chat

Quiet Like Stone.

What you do, I can do too,
Not with noise, but quiet truth.
If I don’t know, I’ll learn the way
Not for the show, not for display.

I watch, I wait, I read the room,
A shadow passing through the gloom.
They speak too loud, they boast, they burn,
While I stay still, but always learn.

I say “I can’t,” though it’s not true,
Just to see what words will do.
It’s not surrender, not defeat
It’s silence standing on its feet.

They step, they push, they walk right through,
As if I’m made of nothing new.
But let them think I’m soft and small,
I’ll rise, and they won’t see at all.

For I am quiet, but not weak,
My silence louder than they speak.
I choose my battles, choose my pace
There’s strength in stillness, not a race.

~chat