Things We Never Say Out Loud

You are playing a game I never agreed to.


Calling checkmate on a board I don’t recognize.


Leaving me to wonder if the rules are written 
in a language only you understand.

You let a smirk slip 
not a mistake, but a matchstick.


Watch the fire catch in my chest,
watch me try to swallow the smoke.

You never lie,
but you never say it straight.

You tilt your phone like a secret,
like a bird tucking its head under its wing,
like a streetlight flickering at the edge of a town
I don’t know how to get back to.

Say it’s private.
 Say not everything has to be shared.

I swallow that sentence like a stone,
wonder how long it will sit in my stomach
 before I stop feeling its weight.

You want to know everything.
You want to hold the blueprints of my past,
memorize the streets I have loved,
the people I have left,
the words I only say in my sleep.

But when I knock on your door,
you answer through the keyhole.
 Say, why do you need to come in?

And I don’t know how to explain
 that it’s not the door that scares me,
it’s the way you keep it locked.

Like maybe love is not supposed to feel 
like an open wound you refuse to stitch up.

I tell you everything.
You tell me just enough to keep me guessing.

And I have loved you 
like a lighthouse loves the ships
 that never seem to stay.

But love should not feel like standing in an earthquake,
waiting to see what parts of me will survive.

Some nights,
when I am half-asleep in your arms,
I think I can hear the ocean between us.

A soft and steady hush,
pulling something away from the shore,
wave after wave,
until all that’s left is the outline of where water used to be.

I used to think love was a garden,
but maybe it is a courtroom.

Maybe you keep your sentences neat and cautious,
filed away in folders I will never see,
worded just right so that if I ever catch you,
you can spread your hands and say,
I never lied.

And maybe that’s true.
 Maybe this is nothing.
Maybe I am pulling ghosts from the shadows
just to give them names.

Or maybe I am just standing in a house
 where every floorboard creaks,
where every room echoes,
where I know something is shifting beneath me
 but no one will say it out loud.

If I stop asking,
if I stop searching,
if I stop standing at the threshold waiting for you to let me in,
will you notice the silence where I used to be?

Or will you just call it privacy?

You don’t lie. 
Not really.
 Not enough for me to leave,
but just enough for me to stay
 and still feel alone.

And maybe that’s the cruelest thing,
that you are not the villain,
and I am not the fool,
but somehow,
this still feels like a tragedy.