Five years.
That\'s how long
my heart has been speaking
in a language nobody hears.
It hasn\'t stopped beating.
It has simply stopped participating.
The seasons arrive.
People celebrate their birthdays.
Old friends become strangers.
New memories are made
in rooms I am physically present in.
And I watch.
I have learned the appropriate expressions
for almost every occasion.
A smile when someone tells a joke.
A congratulations when someone succeeds.
A little excitement when something good happens.
Sometimes I even laugh.
But the sound feels borrowed,
like a recording played
at the correct moment.
I don\'t remember
when happiness became something
I had to imitate.
There was a time
when an evening was just an evening.
Now it becomes a measurement
of everything I haven\'t done,
everyone I haven\'t become,
and every version of myself
I keep failing to recognise.
I carry ambitions
like unfinished buildings.
From a distance,
they look impressive.
Up close,
there are rooms I have never entered,
windows that have never opened,
and a person somewhere inside
who doesn\'t know what he is building anymore.
I am tired of evaluating myself.
Of turning every mistake
into evidence.
Of treating my own existence
like an application
that might be rejected.
Somewhere along these five years,
I began speaking about myself
as though I were someone
I had already given up on.
And perhaps that
is what I find hardest to explain:
I haven\'t stopped wanting things.
I still notice beautiful skies.
I still imagine impossible futures.
I still write words
that sound more alive than I feel.
The world has not become colourless.
I have just forgotten
how to let its colours reach me.
Tonight, I have no conclusion.
No revelation waiting
at the bottom of this page.
Only this:
There is a heart inside me
that has spent five years
being mistaken for silence.
And I am beginning to understand
that silence
is not the same as having nothing to say.