If You’d Just Ask, I’d Answer

I’ve memorized everyone else’s truths; I just wish someone wanted to learn mine.

I ask others who they are
like I’m building a map of heaven-
favorite colors, childhood scars,
what kind of loneliness they prefer.
I learn them until they unfold,
until they stop hiding from their own reflection.

But no one ever asks me back.
They look at me like knowing me
would be too much work,
too much weight,
too much truth.
Like to love me
you’d have to drown in it.

Still-
I ache for it.
To be seen the way I see.
To have someone touch my soul
without flinching.
To be asked,
what lives inside you?
and mean it.

I know it’s too much to want.
I know people like me
are meant to be the listener,
the holder of others’ hurt,
never the one held.
But God,
some nights the wanting burns
so loud it feels alive.

And I tell myself I’ll learn-
to live without being known,
to stop hoping for it.
But even in my stillness,
that whisper remains:
you’d never have to beg for my truth.
If you just asked,
I’d answer.

-Koii