Prompted Beauty

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There is a door in my forehead,
not carved by hands,
but by years that refused to pass quietly—
by questions I swallowed whole,
by truths I held like coals in my mouth
until they cooled into something I could speak.

It glows red.
Not with fire,
but with all the words I never let escape,
the arguments I folded into paper cranes,
the rage I taught to sit, to wait,
to understand that volume is not the same as truth.

I do not open it for everyone.
Some knock with noise—
demanding answers before asking questions.
Some knock with hunger—
wanting to feed on what they find.
Some knock with borrowed truths—
trying to give me back what was never mine.

But behind this door,
memories stand like unfinished sentences,
their endings suspended in the red light—
not broken,
just waiting for the right breath
to carry them into meaning.

My eyes are shadowed,
not because I refuse to see,
but because I've learned
that seeing everything at once
is a burden even light cannot carry.
Sometimes clarity requires darkness first.

The face you see is calm,
almost still—
as if silence itself
has learned how to breathe,
how to hold space
without collapsing into it.

I was taught that restraint is strength,
that not every storm
needs a sky to announce it,
that some battles are won
in the pause between heartbeats,
in the decision to feel everything
and say only what matters.

So I learned to hold my questions
like prayer beads—
counting, not shouting,
trusting that meaning arrives
not in the loudest voice
but in the most honest one.

The red is not danger.
It is awareness.
It is the moment before truth speaks
without raising its voice,
the color of blood remembering
it was always meant to stay inside,
to power the heart,
not prove it exists.

This door does not promise answers.
It promises honesty—
the kind that knows
some questions live longer than their solutions,
that patience is not passive,
that choosing when to speak
is as important as choosing what to say.

The stars watch through my silence tonight.
They understand what it means
to burn without shouting,
to hold light
in a body that is mostly empty space,
to be seen
without begging to be noticed.

And sometimes,
remaining human—
with all our unspoken doors,
our calibrated silences,
our red-lit thresholds—
is the bravest entry
we will ever make
into a world that mistakes noise for presence,
reaction for response,
and words for wisdom.

I stand here, neither open nor closed,
but learning—
learning that the door
that knows your name
is the one you've earned the right to enter,
and that some truths
are worth the weight of silence
it takes to hold them.