You Are Allowed to Be Known

The coffee is warm in your hands, but your chest is cold with the math of omission. You sit across from someone who loves you, and they ask the simplest question: How was your day?

And in that second, you calculate the weight of every detail you must leave out so they don't worry. You become a curator of your own pain, editing the truth until it fits safely on the table.

But the light does not need a performance. It sees the mask you wear for their protection, and it loves the face underneath more than the smile you forced.

There is a rest for the ones who stop calculating. A place where you can say: I am not okay.

And the love does not run. It stays.

The silence you are keeping is not saving them. It is only isolating you.

You are allowed to be known.