By: Dr. Adnan Bozan
I still wager on silence… as though I were placing my soul upon a table of transparent glass, waiting for cracks to slowly spread across its surface—slowly, painfully—like the death of a flower that once believed the light would never betray it.
As though I were planting the wind in my chest, counting the breaths that die before reaching the first step toward life. I feel full of air… yet I do not breathe.
Silence, my friend, is not calmness.
Silence is the noise no one hears,
the scream without a voice,
the sorrow that walks on the tips of its toes so it does not wake the world—
it wakes only you.
Whenever I try to speak, the words shatter in my throat like broken glass.
Whenever I try to cry, the tears dry at the edge of my eyes, as if they too have grown tired of the story and returned without ever touching my cheek.
So I chose silence… not because silence is salvation, but because words became a wound that bleeds only in front of those who do not deserve to see it.
I still wager on this silence—
I surrender to it like someone handing over the final keys of a fallen city.
I return to it whenever language narrows around me,
whenever the cities go dark in my eyes,
whenever disappointments rise beneath my skin like thorns growing from the inside—thorns no hand can pull free.
I know silence saves no one,
brings no one back,
repairs no heart left exposed in the middle of the storm.
But I hold onto it the way a drowning person clings to a small piece of wood they believe to be a shore—
for the drowning do not have the luxury of thought,
only the fear of drowning.
I have grown weary of stories that begin but never end,
of doors left half-open and half-closed,
of faces that approach only to say goodbye,
of dreams that shake my hand with one palm and slip away with the other.
I have grown tired of being myself—
of this vastness that lives inside my chest,
of a soul that breaks slowly and eternally without making a sound,
as if it fears someone might hear… and ask.
So yes… I still wager on silence.
I hold it like a cold hand I know will unleash all the voices at once if it slips away.
I hide the fragile details of my heart in its shadow,
and let the world believe I am fine.
I smile—
because no one understands that some smiles are simply another form of crying.
And the truth?
The truth is that I no longer want anything from life…
except for this small war to end—
this quiet, devastating war
waged inside a heart
that no longer has the space to survive.