I Didn’t Cry, Not Because I Was Strong

They never asked why I didn’t cry. They just liked that I didn’t make a scene. This is what it looks like when silence gets mistaken for strength.

They loved my composure.
Praised the way I kept my throat dry
even when my ribs
were already drowning.

They called it courage.
Discipline.
Said I was a son
worth bragging about
at dinner tables.

But no one asks
what happens to a boy
who learns early
that softness is a liability,
that tears are a trespass
punishable by silence
or shame.

So I traded noise for safety.
Bit down on the river
until my jaw forgot
how to open
without apology.

They mistook my dry eyes for bravery.
Thought I was stoic.
Strong.
A good son.
A good man.

They never saw
how much it ached
to hold back the flood.
How crying felt dangerous,
like once I started,
I’d drown
the whole house.

So I learned to break
quiet enough
to pass for unbroken.
To grieve
in clenched teeth
and bowed heads.

They called it strength
because they never had to live
inside the dam.
Never had to lie awake
hearing the flood claw at the bones
long after the mourners
went home.

Some call that control.
I call it a grave
I dug inside my chest
lined with every tear
I never let them see.

Holy
only because
it kept the room calm
while it buried me alive.

But I’ve done enough
polite dying.

Next time the river rises,
I’ll open my mouth
and let it.

Let it ruin the carpet.
Let it shatter the quiet.
Let them feel the weight
of everything I carried
just to keep
their world dry.

Let them drown.

You’re not a subscriber,
you’re a co-conspirator.
This is a room where silence loses every time we open our teeth together.

Stay. Bring your confession.
Bring your version too loud for polite company.
Here, your rage is holy.
Your softness is armed.
Your boundaries are not up for polite debate.

Every poem you read here is a rib torn loose, a page refusing to stay dead.
Soon they’ll bind themselves into a living thing called Shadow Thoughts: The Silence That Kept Me.
Not tidy self-help but a mirror that won’t flinch when you do.

I don’t know when it’ll wear a spine and a barcode.
I don’t care.
It’s alive now.
Feral. Soft. Dripping on your screen whether you’re ready or not.

Stay loud enough to make the polite ones flinch.
Stay honest enough to scare the hush that raised you.
Stay. We’re louder together.

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P.S.
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