Leo
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned upand be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)
Sylvia Plath, Plath: Poems
The words that cannot be taken back sit differently in the room now, and you are learning to live with their weight without trying to lift them. What was said has changed the terms of how you are known by someone whose opinion you have always carried carefully. The silence that follows is not the absence of sound but the presence of a new understanding about what your reputation can and cannot survive. You discover that being seen clearly, even when it stings, asks less of you than the exhausting work of being seen as you think you should be.