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The Things They Don’t See

The Things They Don’t See

They see the smiles.
They see the laughter.
They see me standing in the light
and think it means I loved it here.

They point to photographs,
to moments in public,
and say, Look—look how happy you were.

But they never had the key.
The inside was never theirs to open.
That door belonged to my husband alone.

What they call happiness
was only me surviving obligation.
The smiles were real in flickers—
yes, genuine in flashes—
but gravely disingenuous,
because nothing here filled me.

This town never gave me belonging.
It never gave me purpose.
It gave me duty.
It gave me responsibility.
Obligation was the only thing
that kept me standing.

And obligation is not love.
Obligation is not connection.
It is a weight you shoulder
until your shoulders break.

That is why leaving was never hard.
There is no heartbreak in walking away
from what never sustained you.
But it is goddamn suffocating
to be stuck in it.

People here think
they brought me happiness,
that being here brought me happiness.
They were never the spring
from which my hope flowed.
They were never that before him.
They never could be.

I made the best
of a god-awful situation
because I had one person
who truly knew what was going on inside me.
And now, without him,
I am surrounded by faces
who think they know my joy
but do not know my truth.

I left them because I had to.
I left because obligation
is not a life.

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