The Mercy of Rejection
Humans search for truth,
even when it breaks them.
For a broken heart
is still better than an empty one—
for the cracks carved by truth
are always shallower
than the void born from silence.
That is why rejection,
however cruel it may seem,
is kinder than silence.
Rejection allows a man to bleed.
It grants him the dignity of pain—
the freedom to let sorrow spill—
onto the ground,
onto paper,
into tears.
But silence denies him even that mercy.
In silence, the soul clings
to the faintest flicker of hope.
Uncertainty does not wound—
it lingers.
It shapes illusions from nothing,
and each time the heart reaches for them,
it is cut—
never deep enough
to end the suffering,
only enough
to begin it again.
Truth liberates.
But uncertainty binds—
with threads so soft
they feel like hope,
yet strong enough
to hold a soul in place.
Rejection lets him fall—
lets him strike the earth,
break beneath the truth,
and gather
what remains of himself.
But silence leaves him
suspended between earth and sky—
neither allowed
to fall and heal,
nor to rise
toward what he longs for.
So—
end this quiet cruelty
with a truth sharp enough
to sever hope.
Let me bleed.
Let me write what remains of you within me.
My blood will clot into your name—
not to curse it,
nor to stain the colour of your eyes,
but to preserve you
in words
even a lifetime cannot erode.
And perhaps, one day,
these words will leave others envious
of a tragedy they never lived—
yearning for a single glimpse of you,
though to them
you could only ever remain
an imagined ache.
But you—
you would have been real in mine.
So end this silence—
for it can belong only
to indifference,
or to a heart unaware
of the quiet power
it holds over another.
Unaware of how deeply
he has become entangled
in the strands of her hair;
how he envies
even the smallest speck of dust
that dares to rest upon her lashes—
closer than he has ever been
to the place
where he longs to disappear.
A place where he would remain,
willingly imprisoned
for eternity—
within her eyes.
A fate so beautiful,
so tragic,
that even the gods
have never known it.
For her eyes
are the only mirror
in which he has ever loved
his own reflection.
~Writer’s Note: I have always wondered which is crueler—a painful answer, or no answer at all.
Rejection breaks something, but at least it gives the broken pieces somewhere to fall. Silence leaves them suspended, held together by that smallest and perhaps cruelest thing: maybe.
This poem was born from that thought—the strange mercy of being given a truth painful enough to finally grieve, rather than a hope too uncertain to ever let go of.
And perhaps that is all rejection really offers:
not freedom from pain,
but permission
to begin healing.