The Years My Heart Didn't Attend

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.