It’s a quiet kind of ache—
to be the one no one remembers to ask,
to sit in the spaces between conversations
and feel unseen,
as though your silence
has erased you.

You give, you listen,
you carry more than you admit,
but the questions skip over you,
like stones skimming water,
never touching the depth beneath.

The lesson is tender,
and hard to hold:
people forget not because you are unworthy,
but because they are weighed down, too.
Their storms blind them
to the storms you carry.

And so you learn—
to ask yourself the questions
you wish someone else would:
How am I, truly?
What small mercy
can I give myself today?

Being overlooked
does not mean you are less.
It means you are called
to remember yourself.
To be your own witness,
your own steady hand,
your own quiet refuge.