The Weight of the Unspoken

There is a silence that follows the breaking of things. It is not a void, but a density. We carry our histories in the marrow, in the way we hold our hands when the wind turns cold, or how we look toward a horizon that offers no promise of warmth. To endure is not an act of noise. It is the quiet refusal to be erased by the landscape of one’s own displacement. We build monuments out of breath and memory, stacking them against the encroaching gray. Some days, the burden is a stone; other days, it is a prayer held so tightly the knuckles turn white. We do not ask for the storm to cease. We only ask for the strength to stand until the light shifts, however briefly, to reveal a path that was not there before. What remains when the shouting stops and the dust settles into the cracks of the earth?

Yousef Deeb has taken this image titled Call for Perseverance. It captures the stillness found within the center of a storm. Does this quiet resolve speak to the endurance you carry within yourself?