In the quiet of my chest, there’s a winter made of you,
Where the echoes of our memories fall like early morning dew.
I’ve tried to spark a fire, but the flames won’t seem to stay,
So I live inside the silence at the closing of each day.
People think that being quiet means I’m drifting far away,
But my calm is just the armor that I forged along the way.
Don’t mistake my steady breathing for a heart that doesn’t care—
I just love a little softer now, with pauses in the air.
There are words that cut like metal, though they never meant to scar,
Sentences unshaped and reckless that can fall a bit too far.
It’s the misuse of a moment, or a phrase misunderstood,
And I crumble in the crossfire even though the aim was good.
So I sit with all my shadows as they whisper what they know,
Let the heartbreak make me wiser in the places love won’t go.
There’s a comfort in the stillness, in the soft between the sound,
Where I learn that broken pieces still remember being found.
And in crowds I feel the chaos of a world that spins too fast,
So I step into the silence where I’m grounded at the last.
Meditation is my refuge, peace my slowly healing art—
I breathe in what’s overwhelming, breathe it out from my cold heart.
Still the world keeps misreading me, thinking quiet means I’m numb,
But inside my chest is thunder that I’ve taught myself to calm.
Every silence holds a meaning, every pause a tender plea:
Please don’t measure what I’m feeling by how little you can see.
Don’t confuse my gentle stillness for the absence of a flame,
I just carry all my warmth in ways too fragile to explain.
And though heartbreak left me wintered, left me wandering through the night,
I am learning that the cold can sculpt a different kind of light.
So I rise with quiet courage as the noise around me swells,
Finding hope between the heartbeats where the deeper story dwells.
For my soul, though bruised and heavy, still beats steady, brave, and deep—
And in stillness I am living, in this stillness I can breathe.
-JL