I Go Quiet to Stay Safe

Dear Delyara, The body still believes silence can save me. Not all silence. A certain kind. The careful kind. The one that makes me smaller in a tense room. The one that edits before it speaks. The one that softens my edges before someone else can take offense to their existence. I know where it comes from. I know it worked once. I know it doesn’t always belong in my current life the way my body still thinks it does. That’s the hard part. Being old enough to understand the pattern and still fast enough to fall into it. I’m tired of surviving rooms that no longer deserve that level of obedience from me.