There are things I need to say that I still cannot risk saying

Dear Delyara, Not because I enjoy silence. Because silence still feels safer than consequence. There are truths in me about my marriage, my work, my family, my own resentment, my fear, my exhaustion, the limits I’m reaching, the parts of me that feel starved and the parts that are becoming colder because they’ve gone unfed too long. I know these truths. I even hear their wording sometimes when I lie awake. And still I don’t say them. Because speech changes rooms. Because truth destabilises arrangements. Because once certain things are spoken, everyone must either respond honestly or reveal how little room they really had for the truth in the first place. So I carry them. That carrying has a cost. It changes my tone. My sleep. My body. My appetite for closeness. Silence protects and poisons in the same act. I am tired of living in that contradiction.