The world is a strange place. Stay silent too long and it folds around you, dimming you like a candle swallowed by fog, letting your traces sink beneath layers of dust that no one remembers. You try to speak, because something inside you insists on being heard, yet the world shies away from voices that echo too brightly, too honestly, too close to whatever a soul truly is.
So you shape masks out of quiet nights and borrowed smiles, each one fitting just enough to pass, each one soft enough not to disturb anything. You learn to mute your joy, your strangeness, your colors.
You learn to mute yourself.
Pieces of you fall away like petals in slow motion, just so you can keep moving.
And somewhere along the way, your soul grows quiet, so quiet you almost forget the sound it used to make.
