sensitive

sensitive.
they use it like an insult.
and it’s almost always the same kind of person who uses it that way -
the one hiding behind coldness and so-called facts,
the one who only ever feels anything on the surface.

i’ve been called it often enough. you probably have too.
usually by someone who meant it as a diagnosis.
you’re too sensitive. as if it were a thing to be treated.
as if the correct amount of feeling were less.

and here is what they never actually see.
sensitive is not about crying easily.
sensitive is walking into a room and knowing, before anyone speaks,
that something is wrong between two people who are smiling.
it’s reading a paragraph and having to put the book down.
it’s a stranger’s bad day landing on you like it’s your own.
it’s noticing the person nobody is talking to at the table
and not being able to enjoy the evening until you’ve fixed it.

that is not weakness. that is a whole extra sense.
it is exhausting and it does not switch off and nobody asked if you wanted it,
but do not, for one second, let them tell you it is a defect.

because feeling things deeply is the entire point.
emotion turned all the way up. love that takes the roof off.
when did that become the thing to apologise for.
when did we start handing out respect
to whoever could feel the least and call it strength.

that’s the part i can’t get past.
they didn’t just decide feeling was weakness.
they decided numbness was maturity, and coldness was intelligence,
and they built a whole way of being out of not being touched by anything.
and then they called us the broken ones.

i think it’s the reverse.
i think it takes nothing to go through life untouched.
you just close the door and never open it.
anyone can do that. most people do.

the hard thing, the actual strong thing,
is to keep feeling all of it - the grief that doesn’t announce itself,
the love that costs you, the small scenes that undo you in public -
and to keep walking around with the door open anyway.

you have to feel the thing to be alive in it.
you have to let it reach you.

otherwise you’re not living. you’re just not-dying,
and calling the difference maturity.