The Hardest Thing To Accept Is Being Understood
The jars were meant to confuse even me —
labels scrawled backward,
dates falsified,
contents misnamed to keep them harmless.
I stacked them like decoys —
rows of false feelings,
the real ones buried deeper,
sealed in wax no hand could open.
Years I have walked these shelves blind,
touching glass like a stranger in my own skin;
aware of the weight,
but never sure what it held.
Then you came —
not breaking, not judging —
turning the right ones over in silence,
as if you always knew
where I’d hidden the truest rot.
I want to shout liar,
fraud,
to call your kindness a trick —
because what sense can there be
in understanding what is senseless?
But you lift a jar I thought unopenable,
hold it to the light;
and even I can see through it.
A clarity I never asked for,
yet cannot deny —
painful, precise,
like waking from sleep in a burning room.
I built these shelves crooked on purpose,
so even I would lose my way,
so even I could not find the one jar
with my true name scrawled under the lid.
Years, I walked these tunnels blind —
aware of the weight of glass,
but never knowing its contents.
I am foreign even to myself:
the way I think bends like warped wood,
splintering under every step.
A painful clarity —
like waking to sunlight on burned skin,
like discovering the wound
was always mine to tend.
Now the jars sing at night —
not mournful, but bright,
a low hum rising through floorboards.
The shelves tremble with it;
the dust learns joy.
I am afraid to join them —
afraid this understanding is borrowed,
that one day she will set the jars down
and leave the cellar quiet again.
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