Edges of the Head

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  A head is not merely bone and skin, but a chamber of storms, where thought churns like restless seas and colours spill beyond their edges. What can the brain contain? It holds infinities, yet bends beneath routines: the labour of survival, the weight of names, the endless tally of tasks that tether imagination to necessity. Once there was a freedom— a childhood bright with unscripted hues, where colours did not ask permission to scatter, and play was the only labour. But thresholds arrive, drawn by institutions, by timetables, by the slow narrowing of sky into ceiling. Here the child learns to sit, to raise a hand, to speak in sequence, to dream only in sanctioned hours. The head adapts. It absorbs order as it once absorbed wonder, and the saturation of colour dims into function. Yet at the edges, still, the threshold glimmers— a reminder that within the skull’s dark theatre there lingers a pulse of rebellion, a fragment of the child unwilling to be tamed. And perhaps that ...

The Hunger to Be Seen

Every morning,
before we step into the world,
we choose a mask.
Some are polished with courtesy,
some painted with confidence,
some stitched from silence.
Rarely do we leave bare.

The mask is survival.
It smooths the edges of anger,
hides the fractures of doubt,
shapes us into what others
want to see.
In workplaces,
in families,
in friendships—
we perform.

Why do we do this?
Because behind the masks,
a quieter truth waits:
the need to be seen,
to be accepted,
to be told we matter.
Validation is not vanity,
but a hunger as old as breath.
Even stars,
burning in vast solitude,
shine only when there are eyes
to witness their light.

But the weight of masks is heavy.
Sometimes we forget
which face is ours.
Sometimes the applause
feels hollow,
because the one who is praised
is not the one who is hurting within.

And yet,
we continue—
for to strip away the mask
is to risk loneliness,
to risk being unchosen.
The human heart,
fragile and defiant,
would rather wear disguises
than vanish unnoticed.

Perhaps the truest freedom
is not in discarding the mask,
but in finding those few
before whom
we dare to be unpainted.
For in their gaze,
validation is not demanded—
it is given,
quietly,
like sunlight on the skin.