Quiet Inheritance

Some people are raised
inside conversations
that never truly begin.

Questions are treated like rebellion.
Feelings become interruptions.
And love arrives
only after everyone has agreed
to pretend nothing happened.

The adults rarely notice.

Not because they cannot see—

but because looking closely
would require reopening rooms
they spent decades sealing shut.

So discomfort develops
its own language.

A slammed cabinet
means more than words.

A sigh
becomes a warning.

Silence
becomes the safest answer
anyone knows how to give.

Children don't understand
they're learning survival.

They simply become fluent.

Fluent in watching faces.

Fluent in measuring distance.

Fluent in shrinking themselves
before anyone asks them to.

Years later,
they'll call it anxiety.

But before it had a name,
it was simply adaptation.

And healing often begins
the moment someone realizes

they were never born
too sensitive.

They were simply trained
to notice storms
before everyone else.