The air thickens, a sudden storm in the quiet room. Yelling erupts, sharp shards of sound that catch the light wrong, piercing the fragile membrane of our shared space. Voices climb, straining against the ceiling, a desperate, uneven pitch that leaves the throat raw and the heart bruised. Then the silence falls, not peace, but a heavy blanket, the immediate aftermath of a collapsing structure. Stonewalling begins. A wall goes up, smooth, impenetrable gray. Eyes look through, not at, a landscape suddenly distant. Words offered gently bounce off the unyielding surface, a soft rain ignored by granite. The space between us widens, a canyon carved by unspoken things, where echoes go to die, unheard. And somewhere, in the official halls, where purpose once resided, an oath becomes thin air, a forgotten whisper in a dusty binder. Abuse creeps in, slow and certain, a stain spreading on clean linen. A department's promise, once a sturdy beam, now warps under unseen pressure, bending toward a darker purpose. The foundation shifts, not with a grand collapse, but a subtle, sickening lean. My sons name, a constant river in the dark, flows nightly through my mind. They speak it, explain it, a broken record playing on repeat, a ritual I am commanded to join. Go, they urge, call the others, spread the narrative, let the incorrect version root deeper. I did not deny the shadow, the phantom shapes they insisted were real, to feed a garden of corrupted belief, a harvest of misinterpretation. I stood silent when silence was a lie, and spoke when my voice felt small against the roar. I did not lessen the accusation, not by a single degree, though my capacity to bear it felt worn threadbare. Unfaithfulness, they paint it, a broad, damning stroke across a canvas that holds so much more light. True, perhaps, in their narrow frame of sight, but truth shifts with the turning sun. To question is a sin now, yet in the not-knowing, in the gaps where understanding should bloom, doubt plants its sharp, insistent seeds. Could and could not become weapons, words thrown across the widening divide. I crave the knowledge that dismantles this cage, to see the mechanism behind the performance, to know more, simply to survive the knowing more of this distorted, heavy air.

Imyeildin