I Gave My Poetry to Someone Who Didn’t Know How to Read

I gave my poetry to someone who didn’t know how to read. Not words no, I mean the silences between them. The cracks where I hid my bruises, the tremble between I’m fine and I’m breaking.

They looked at my lines like they were grocery lists, not confessions. They circled the rhymes and missed the pain.

I gave them sunsets painted in blood, letters folded in longing, metaphors that bled my truth and they asked if it was fiction.

How do you teach someone to read emotions when they’ve only ever looked at faces? How do you make them feel the weight of unsaid things when their heart’s never learned the alphabet of ache?

I gave my poetry to someone who didn’t know how to read. And when they left, they didn’t steal my words they left them behind, unopened.