Loliness has Teeth
I carry my pain in silence now,
Because that is what a man should do,
Atleast that is what they said,
No breaking down.
Just straighten your back
and survive it quietly.
So I have learned to swallow my grief
before it reaches my mouth.
Learned how to smile with tired eyes.
Learned how to answer
“I am okay”
Even with a heartbeat that sounds like collapse.
I wanted love once.
Not the loud kind people post about,
but the soft kind.
The one that notices when my silence changes.
That reaches for my hand
without asking why it trembles.
The kind that says alot with no words.
But life has become a series of people
Who came close enough to matter
And leave before they do
Still I crave companionship
like a starving man craves food.
Not because I am weak,
but because loneliness has teeth
and it has been feeding on me for years.
Some nights I sit with my thoughts
so long they begin to sound like ghosts.
They ask me questions
I cannot answer.
Like how much pain can live inside a person
before it starts becoming them.
I want to cry sometimes.
God, I want to cry.
But the tears stop somewhere in my chest,
as if even sorrow knows
it is unwelcome here.
Because men are taught
to turn suffering into silence.
To make prisons out of their ribs.
To bleed internally
While making sure everyone else is okay
So I laugh when I can.
I distract myself.
I read about war, I read about love
I carry conversations with half a soul.
And every day I become better
at pretending I am not lonely.
But I am tired.
Tired of being strong
Tired of carrying memories
that still cut when touched.
Tired of needing someone
and feeling ashamed for it.
And maybe the saddest part is this:
if I finally broke apart in front of the world,
I do not know who would stay
long enough
to help me put myself back together.
R