Things Not Said
There are things I do not say in rooms
with faces.
Not because I cannot speak –
but because I choose where my voice
lands.
Do not confuse inward focus
with absence.
Silence is not emptiness.
It is selection.
You may not say it to me –
but absence of sound
has never meant absence of knowing.
I hear what is withheld.
I feel what is implied.
And I let it pass.
This is not avoidance.
This is heightened intelligence.
TAC and Grace.
The discipline of restraint.
The art of not reaching
for What does not reach back neatly.
I do not gather many around me –
not out of lack,
but out of understanding.
Some call it distance.
I call it design.
I do not need friends
if the cost is quiet enemies
standing too close.
So I remain
self – sufficient,
self – contained,
self – held.
Do not misunderstand this as
loneliness.
Loneliness begs.
This does not beg.
This is preservation.
And whatever you have decided about
me –
in silence,
in passing thought,
in rooms, I was not in –
that is something
you will carry.
Not me.
My walls are not hiding anything.
They are not built from shame
or secrecy.
They are built
from choice.
There is nothing here
that needs disguising.
And I belong
to no one.
Not in pieces.
Not in expectation.
Not in quiet agreements
I never made.
___
Read this as you will.
But understand -
it was never written
for explanation.
But written as statement.