Empty Stage

I stand before the mirror every morning,
putting on the mask they want to see.
I smile when I feel like crying,
playing the role they wrote for me.

But no one asks how I am,
no one sees that my eyes are empty.
Only the surface matters, the well-written script,
the laughter behind which the silence is bitter.

I sit at home in the middle of the room,
four walls that are both prison and refuge.
My phone is silent, the messages are old,
as if they were left behind from another life.

I want to love. Someone who sees.
Who looks not at my mask, but at my wounds.
Who knows that behind my smile
a child is crying who never received a hug.

But the stage is empty. The audience has left.
Only the curtain stirs in the draft.
And I stand here, in the spotlight,
alone, invisible, forgotten.

They say time heals.
But time only deepens the wound.
Because every day that passes without
someone truly seeing me
is another layer on the wall of loneliness.

I'm not angry. I'm too tired even for anger.
I just sit in the silence and watch the sky.
Hoping that one day, from somewhere, someone
will lay down their mask beside me, and just sit in silence.

With me.