I am too fluent in saying enough without saying the centre

Dear Delyara, I know exactly how to speak around the real thing in ways that sound open, thoughtful, even vulnerable, while still keeping the deepest truth sealed off. It is a survival skill so polished it barely looks like fear anymore. It looks like personality. It looks like grace. It looks like discretion. And maybe sometimes it is. But I also know the cost. The little split it creates every time. The feeling of having been in a conversation and not truly there in the way I wanted to be. The exhaustion of protecting the centre so well that even I start feeling far from it.