I Thought I Could Say It

I rehearse the sentence in private. It behaves there. It sounds like truth with good posture.

Then I say it out loud and it becomes a different thing—too sharp, too soft, too careful, too late.

The version of me that speaks is always slightly behind the version of me that understands.

I don’t want to be impressive. I want to be accurate. I want the words to match the shape of what happened inside me.

But accuracy is not a single sentence. It’s a series of returns. It’s noticing what I avoided and then coming back for it.