Because Silence Can't Be Misread
UNATTENDEDTHOUGHTS
Poetry
Originally Published: 19 December 2025
Because Silence Can't Be Misread
These are the letters I never sent.
The “I’m sorry” scrawled at 3 a.m.
creased in my palm like contraband,
folded tighter than the throat I never unclenched.
The kind of sorry that tastes like blood,
like ink bleeding across my chest.
Letters to the lovers who never knew me;
to the ones who measured me in silence,
and thought my quiet could be bent,
folded, reshaped, made smaller
so the weight of your storms
didn’t touch you.
I learned how long a shadow can stretch,
how many storms someone can carry
before they start to leak.
I swallowed yours anyway.
I smiled anyway.
I watched pieces of me
disappear between your fingers,
and you
you carried nothing.
Not a trace. Not a question. Not a single weight returned.
Letters to my sister;
your absence is a house I keep redecorating,
but the walls still smell like you.
I wrote once
and the ink froze mid-word,
as if even paper
couldn’t carry the weight of your name.
I trace the corners of your memory
like fingerprints left in dust,
trying to hold the shape of you
before it crumbles into air.
Sometimes I speak to the silence,
as if it could answer,
as if your laughter still lingered
between these rooms.
I set places at tables
you’ll never sit at,
and fold your absence into origami,
a paper reminder
that some love is too vast for the world
and too heavy to leave behind.
Letters to the God I prayed to in bathroom stalls,
asking if resurrection ever comes
to those still breathing.
If Lazarus had to want it,
or if the stone rolls back
only for the chosen.
David cried, “How long, O Lord?”
Job clawed at silence until it bled.
Even Christ whispered in Gethsemane
“Let this cup pass.”
And still…
my prayers bounce back
rubber bullets in my ribcage,
my chest a battlefield
for faith I can’t always reach.
Letters to myself;
the version that still believes in someday,
that sharpens hope like a blade,
even when the world
keeps telling her to dull the edge,
even when I am
trying to dull it myself.
These are the letters I never sent.
Because paper is safer than people.
Because silence,
at least,
can’t be misread.
I fold these words into my hands
like brittle paper cranes,
like small bones I can still hold
when the rest of me is hollow.
About the Poem
Because Silence Can’t Be Misread is a poem written as a way of giving shape to all the words that were never managed to be said out loud. It takes the form of unsent letters—some addressed to people once loved, some to a sister who passed away, some to God when faith felt too heavy, and some to the self. Writing the poem became a way of sitting with silence while admitting that silence has its own kind of weight. The poem explores what it means to carry storms that were never one’s own, to apologise without speaking, and to pray without answers. Images such as paper cranes, haunted houses, and prayers that bounce back are used because they capture how grief and memory live in the body. Though deeply personal, the poem hopes to speak to anyone who has held back words, carried too much for others, or tried to fold survival into something fragile yet enduring.
The Creative
UNATTENDEDTHOUGHTS
Zoey/unattendedthoughts wields a deep passion for storytelling, poetry and creative expression. Her work often explores themes of grief, love, identity, and resilience, drawing from personal experiences and broader social realities. She is interested in using literature as both a mirror and a bridge reflecting human complexity while connecting readers to emotions they might not otherwise voice. As an emerging writer, she aims to grow her craft and share narratives that resonate with honesty, vulnerability, and imagination.