Oh Little Clown

If heaven ever gave me one power, I'd spend it in someone's darkest hour sit beside the lonely when the whole world walks away, and remind them softly, *you don't have to be okay.* Perhaps that's because I know how loud the quiet can become, how a person can disappear without ever leaving the room. I've always wondered what it would feel like to be seen without explanation— no mask, no *I'm fine,* no carefully edited version of a life. Just the unfinished parts. The cracks. The things I haven't learned to name. Maybe that's how a damaged soul becomes something beautiful not by hiding every scar, but by letting the light find its way through them. I think solitude became my home because it never asked me to perform. Take my strength if you need it. Take every victory and call it yours. Just leave me the quiet I've found too much of myself there to give it away. And if I cannot bend the will of heaven above, then I'll raise a little hell for the things I still love. But I'm learning not every battle is mine, not every door is meant to open, and sometimes timing is simply another name for life telling you to move on. Somewhere underneath it all there is still a little clown tired, ridiculous, trying his hardest, giving what he can. So don't be so hard on yourself, little clown. Take off the painted smile. Put the red nose down. The world will survive if you stop performing for a while. Rest. Let the night pass without asking it for answers. And when the dust eventually settles over this chest of mine, I hope it carries nothing heavier than the lessons I've collected. Because perhaps the point was never to leave untouched. Perhaps we're meant to become a mosaic of everything that tried to break us— still imperfect, still unfinished, still here. And maybe that's enough.