:DIFFERENT:

Just a room where I’ve turned the volume down so I can hear myself think. At a distance, a locked door: arms crossed, eyes somewhere else, mouth shut. I threw the key.

Their own stories on my silence: snob, stuck‑up, mad, sad.

Truth is simpler, but somehow harder to explain.

In this world of major anthems, I am a low song humming under everyone else’s chorus. You’d hear it, you just gotta stay long enough to let your ears adjust.

Blending into the background. I disappear in crowds.

A life that’s simple on purpose. I work, I roll, I come home. Mats under my feet, family under my roof.

That’s enough. Always.

Different isn’t a costume I wear, it’s the way my bones are wired.

Not mainstream, rivers like me run underground: quiet, cold, clear, carving my path in the dark where no one wants to look.

When you see me in a corner, I’m just tuning my heart to a safer volume, waiting for the rare kind of person who hears a minor key in the background, and knows it’s a song worth listening to all the way through.

A quiet shape in a loud room, the still note.

A chair against the wall everyone leans coats on.

They don’t see how noisy it gets inside a quiet person, how I sift every sentence over and over before it ever leaves my mouth. Standing at the edges, hands in pockets, eyes on exits, letting their laughter pass over me like waves over buried river rock.

And then, all of a sudden, on the mats, I finally speak.

Bare feet on the canvas, fingers tapped and knotted in a sleeve, my truth in pressure and angles. Here, language is weight and timing, the slow turning of a hip, the inch that decides if I choke or breathe. Every round is a small confession.

I don’t trust easily.

I flinch at sudden noise.

I am scared of being known, and more scared of being mistaken.

The mat doesn’t mind. It just takes my sweat, my shaking hands, and gives me back one more breath I thought I’d lost. I learn that I can still find air. When I tap, I learn that letting go doesn’t mean I failed, it means I get to try again.

So I drive. I work. I roll. I take care of my family. This world calls it “not enough,”like I’m supposed to want a brighter stage, louder friends, a life with more applause and less silence.

My peace is a narrow room

I keep on purpose: these same worn mats, this same warm roof, soft light, low volume, a door that doesn’t slam.

So if you misread me, that’s alright. Not every song is meant for every ear.

I’ll be here,quiet in the corner, river under the city, rolling, breathing, turning the volume down to a life that finally sounds like mine.

——— END