Punctuation

Don's Make Me Say It

Don't ask me if I'm okay.
Don't hug me because you know I'm not, based on the look of me and the emotion climbing up into my eyes.
Don't use how well you know me to berate my barricades.
"You sure?" Don't give me that look, the one you use to interrogate my "I'm okay".
Giving me one last chance to express what's weighing me down, as I now know you caught that something was off.
Your emotion is evident here too.
I can read you well too.
I see the concern in your own eyes, and in the way you move your face.
It's a combination of concern and knowing that I'm lying.
You raise your brows in disbelief and then furrow their ends to express your concern.
Is it evident in the intonation of my voice?
Or has the glimmer in my eyes disappeared?
Do you see these pains and problems written like a chapter of my book along my face?
Are you the only one?
The dam I built so strong and sturdy will burst and my eyes will relinquish the flood waters, allowing them to surge down my face.
Don't make me say it.
I'm not okay.
But I don't want to cry about it, I don't want to crumble into rubble like a lost city.
I'll take your affection and your concern; in fact, I want them.
But not here, not now, not when the world is watching.
I don't want them to see me like that.
Not while I'm too vulnerable to defend who I am.
But you—you know who I am.
You know me when I'm smiling and still when I am in pieces.
You know the name of my city still while it is reduced to rubble,
And then you help me to rebuild.
You hug all of the houses and market places and gardens back into place.
You replant my farms and my trees.
And you tend to them with a watering pail every day.
Little by little, I am brought back from the rubble.
Right now I need your silence.
I need you to find me later on.
Because I can't fall like this here.
These people—they don't know me.
These people—they wouldn't understand.
Sometimes I just don't know what's wrong.
Sometimes that simple question makes everything fall apart.
Everything that was so "perfectly" held together by wetted duct tape and a single, lonely thread.
Don't say it.
Don't ask me.
Because then I'll have to lie to you,
And even though you know me well enough to know the mannerisms of my lies,
It will still hurt like a sin.
Burn like a sin.
Hit me like a sin.
Don't make me lie to you.
And certainly don't make me say it.
I'm not okay.