I see the smile you use
to keep the world away,
a careful mask you’ve learned to wear.
But deep behind your eyes,
a storm gathers, heavy and restless,
waiting to break.

I see the pain you hide,
how it seeps through the surface,
quiet cracks no one else seems to notice.

I want to reach for you,
but my hands hesitate
in the space between us.
I want to speak,
but it stays there, unsaid.

So I sit beside you in silence,
where my presence is the only language I know.
I listen as your sorrow spills over,
soft and endless like rain.

I walk beside you,
lifting what I can of your unseen weight,
even as it settles into my soul.

I feel your pain as if it were my own,
not borrowed but shared,
until it grows too heavy inside my chest.

I say nothing.
But still I stay.

And in the quiet,
I hope you can feel it,
this unspoken care,
this silent kind of love
that does not know how to hold,
but never leaves.