It doesn't start with shouting
but with glances that linger too long,
questions that carry no curiosity
only judgement, wrapped in politeness.

You walk through streets
as if history is written on your forehead,
as if every step awakens echoes
of names meant to be forgotten
but never were.

You carry stories older than walls,
rituals the body remembers
before the mind fully understands.
They call it different
as if being different
is a crime
There is something in the air,
intangible, sharp,
cutting without touching,
yet you feel it
every single day.

Sometimes you become silence
to keep the peace intact.
Sometimes you are a voice
against a wall of noise.

But you remain.
Not as defiance,
not out of stubbornness,
but because to exist
is already an answer.

You are,
as you have always been,
unshaken in the knowledge
that identity needs no permission to be.