The email draft sits unsent.
Not because I don’t know the words,
but because I do.

My phone buzzes,
and I let it.
The silence is easier
than explaining myself
to another rectangle of light.

I’ve learned how to smile
in the doorway,
to shrug when someone asks,
How’s it going?
They don’t really want to know.

At night, the quiet multiplies.
I hear it in the walls,
in the spaces between the dishwasher clicks.
A metronome reminding me
I am not unfinished,
just unseen.

And maybe you feel it too,
that urge to measure your worth
by the weight of your inbox,
by the applause that never arrives.

What if all along
we were waiting
for a permission slip
no one is handing out?

– Meg Taylor

Author’s Note: This piece came from that fleeting moment when the truth wants out but the voice hesitates, so the poem speaks instead.