The Stone Within

 “There’s a stone asleep beneath my skin. No one sees it, but it weighs me down.”

Some days, I move through the world as if everything were normal:
I pay bills, though my hand trembles holding the pen.
I greet people, while my eyes search for a quiet corner.
I smile, even though part of me lingers somewhere behind.

Beneath the surface,
my inner world holds something unseen.

A stone.

Silent.
Cold as marble.
Heavy, as if filled with secrets.

Sometimes it’s nothing but a faint pull,
like a tight thread hidden beneath my skin.

Other times,
it’s a dense weight,
so deep it feels as though it might drag me under.

It doesn’t show on my face when I laugh.
It hides between careful words.

But it’s there,
still and alert,
beating like a quiet pulse of stone.

And I’ll confess something:

The weight of being misunderstood
hurts more than the stone itself.

The eyes that see nothing.
The question that keeps returning:
“Are you still dealing with that?”

Carrying something inside me
means living with a silence no one else can hear.

Today, I simply want to say:

If you, too, carry something hidden beneath your skin,
you’re not alone.

Even if no one else can see it,
even if it feels impossibly heavy at times…

Keep believing in lighter days.