Letters from a still face

(free. keep it. or send it to the one everybody gets wrong.)

hey you.

your face doesn't do the thing. people stand there waiting for the small signal, the one that says happy, or grateful, or fine, and it doesn't come. so they write their own version of you instead. quiet gets filed as cold. still gets filed as bored. no reaction gets filed as no feeling. i know the file they keep on you. i have my own copy.

here's what i know that they don't: it's all happening. every bit of it, the whole loud weather, all the time. it's just that the thing that feels and the thing that shows are two different systems, and yours never learned to sync. that's not a defect. it's a dialect.

so this one is for you, from someone fluent: you are not cold. you are not empty. you are not doing it on purpose. it just doesn't fit through the usual door. mine is jammed too. i checked.

and to whoever holds this for someone: you don't have to fix anything. just learn the channel that works. it's louder than it looks.

csenge

P.S. this is what i do. if you want one for your own person: tell me who they are and one true thing about them, and the first line comes back free. [email protected]