I cannot look away from tangled threads,
the kind that quietly pull behind tired eyes,
the words that never found their way to lips,
the truths that learned to wear a soft disguise.
I used to think that if I sat with people,
and traced the knots back to where it all began,
that something in the silence would surrender,
that broken things could mend between two hands.
Maybe half of everything we've lost
was only lost because we didn't speak.
Maybe all those walls we built so carefully
were just the echoes of the words we couldn't seek.
I never asked for anything in return.
I want you to know that even now, even still.
There was no motive hiding in my kindness,
just something old and aching I couldn't keep still.
But people have been used so many times
they've forgotten what it looks like to be seen.
So when someone reaches out without a reason,
they wonder what it is that hands like mine could mean.
I regret the ones I couldn't reach in time,
the threads I found too frayed, too far gone.
I carry them the way you carry autumn
knowing it was beautiful, knowing it moved on.
God made some hearts too tender for this world,
too aware of where the quiet hurting lives.
And maybe that's not weakness, maybe that's the reason
some souls are here to take what no one gives.
So I'll keep sitting with the tangled ones,
in the soft and fading hours of the day.
Hoping someone, somewhere, with the same tired kindness,
finds my threads and gently finds a way.
-Rohan Ghalib