Too Much

I have always been too much. Too loud when silence was sacred, too soft when the world begged for steel. Too eager, too open, too full of something that spilled out in all the wrong places. I laugh too hard, love too deep, feel everything with a weight that bends my bones. I do not know how to be small, how to fold myself neatly into their hands. They make me feel like a stain on something pristine, like I should know better than to be seen. like my existence is a mess they have to step over. Like my voice is a fire alarm in a room that was meant to stay quiet. I have tried to press myself into corners, tried to sand myself down into something palatable, but even my silence is too loud. Even my absence is felt. They do not know what to do with me. With the way I love without restraint, with the way I burn without asking for permission. So they turn away, so they call it embarrassing, exhausting— so they pretend not to see. I have always been too much. And I am tired of apologizing for it.