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They say boys don’t cry.
They say it like a promise.
Like strength is stitched in our skin at birth
and weakness is something
you have to unzip your chest to find.

I was eight
when I learned that sadness had a gender.
That girls get tissues,
and boys get told to “tough it out.”

That scraped knees get band-aids,
but broken hearts?
Those just get buried under
“man up”
and “you’ll be fine.”

I was twelve
when my dad said,
“Stop acting like a girl.”
Like emotions were diseases
and I’d caught one.

So I stopped.
Stopped crying.
Stopped talking.
Stopped needing anything
that made me look soft.
Because being soft
felt like being disposable.

And you wonder why boys break things
before they break down?
Why fists meet walls before feelings meet words?

We are taught to bottle it up—
but no one tells you what happens
when the pressure hits the glass ceiling of your skull.

I walk hallways with a smile that’s a lie.
Teachers don’t ask.
Friends don’t see.
And the counselor?
Too busy with the loud kids,
the girls who cry pretty in bathrooms.
My silence doesn’t make a scene.
It just echoes.

Some nights I scream
into pillows
so I don’t have to apologize
for having a voice.

But no one sees bruises
when they’re on the inside.
No one asks
if you're okay
when your mask fits perfectly.

And I want to tell you—
depression wears cologne too.
Anxiety knows how to laugh at jokes.
Panic attacks can come
after touchdowns and straight A’s.

I want to scream:
Check on your boys.
Check on the ones who always say, “I’m good.”
Check on the ones whose humor hits too hard,
too fast,
like they’re trying to dodge their own thoughts.

Because we are drowning
in plain sight.

We are falling
but our hands look like fists,
so no one thinks to catch us.

We are breaking
in ways that look like silence.

And silence
doesn’t make noise
until it’s too late.
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