Makitia Thompson Poet Narrative

The Things I'll Never Say

There are words
I’ve carried so long
they’ve fused with my spine.
Not because I’m hiding,
but because speaking them
might undo me.

Like:
I wish you had stayed.
Like:
I was never okay after that.
Like:
I loved you more than I should have,
and you knew.

These things,
they live in the pause
between my inhale and my answer.
In the way I text “I’m fine”
instead of “I’m falling apart.”
In the smile I paste on
when the room is too loud
to be honest.

I’ve written letters
I’ll never send.
Had conversations in my head
that ended with someone finally saying,
“I’m sorry.”
But silence is safer.
It doesn’t require forgiveness.
Only endurance.

There’s a version of me
that speaks it all,
every wound,
every wish,
every “I miss you”
I buried out of pride.
But she’s too brave
for this world.
She doesn’t survive
where people punish
vulnerability.

So I keep the words soft.
Swallowed.
Stacked like bricks
in the mouth of a well.
And if I’m quiet,
it’s not because I have nothing to say.
It’s because I’ve said it
too many times
to people who never listened.

The truth?
I’m full of language
I’ll never be fluent in.
And still,
I write.
Because some confessions
only make sense
when spoken to the page.

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Justin Bordner January 30, 2026 at 5:56 AM Has the page made a promise to you about that place where you keep that one word which conquers despair, following the trail of your spindled spine I'm led to a sepulchre in the mountain of your mind, wherein you have laid to rest, not an ashen heart, instead, interred the dried tears of innocence now grown goodbye into gallant love...J.A.B.