I never could touch you,
never could witness the depths of what you truly felt;
that wound that bloomed sudden in the middle of the night
deep in your chest—
I could never heal it.
Your past remains unknown to me;
and when feeling breaks through, unbidden, unguarded,
in that undefended moment—
I could not hold you close enough,
could not grip you tight.
When fierce emotion closes around you,
I could not be the companion to your solitude.
That smile you wear at once to hide the pain,
plastered across your eyes and face—
I never understood its meaning.
Truly, I have never yet known you.
Even as your hurt began to gather, to harden,
I never once turned back to look.
That day, tears gathered at the corner of your eye,
they gathered there, yes,
but I gave them no weight.
I never saw what lived inside you.
You held my hand so tightly then…
the way silence holds itself against a wall,
nothing but a long and weary breath.
In the warmth of your lips
a fragment of a smile,
in your eyes' gaze old memories—
and I am haunted
by an unbearable guilt.
# A Criminal Confession I am guilty— let me confess before the court of my own conscience. I have loved too much, and in that excess, forgotten to love the ones who needed it. I have spoken harsh words like stones cast into still water, watched the ripples spread and called it honesty. I am guilty of silence— the kind that weighs like snow, heavy enough to bury a thousand apologies. I have taken credit for small mercies as though I had moved mountains. I have looked away when the world burned, told myself it was not my fire. I am guilty of being human, of wanting too much, of giving too little, of knowing better and doing worse. I have worn kindness like a borrowed coat, returned it when the weather turned cold. I have promised forever in the tone of casual greeting. I confess: I have loved the idea of love more than the person standing before me. I have been cruel in the name of truth. I have been silent in the name of peace. And now, in this courtroom of shadows, I plead guilty to all of it— not for absolution, but for the weight of knowing that confession, too, can be a kind of selfishness.
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