An Argument in Forms
Some people believe the bravest thing is to speak.
Others believe it’s to wait.
I don’t know which is right—
only that both leave marks.
This is what happened when I let them argue.
The Arrow
I lose the truth the moment it’s let loose,
An arrow fired before the hand can shake.
What good is sight if hoarded like a bone,
Or light withheld for caution’s brittle sake?
The world is wide; the mouth was made to speak.
Delay is fear borrowing the language of care.
I trust the open wound, the honest leak,
The blaze that proves the thing was dearly bought.
What lives unsaid begins to rot in place.
I’d rather burn than kneel to silent grace,
than call restraint a virtue when it isn’t.
Wind
Wait.
You keep saying truth
as if the word were stable,
as if it didn’t tilt the moment you touched it.
Which one failed you,
the truth spoken too early,
or the one that waited until it learned the cost?
And who was watching when you chose?
Language isn’t a verdict.
It’s a corridor that shifts when you walk it.
Some doors open on commas,
that soft delay where breath still decides.
Some fracture at the em dash—
the moment thought interrupts itself,
not ready to choose, unwilling to retreat.
Some only yield to colons:
the moment you commit
even if you’re not ready to finish the sentence.
The Hand
I am not fire.
I am not silence.
I am the hand that chooses the vessel
after the truth is known.
Sometimes I choose flight
because the moment is burning
and silence would be cowardice.
Sometimes I choose burial
because what is living
needs time to harden into bone,
to stop bleeding when touched.
I have lived with both regrets.
Some words are worn for years,
mistaken for silence.
Then a moment strikes the fabric
and the hidden weight
comes back
across the face.
So I decide:
whether the truth becomes
a story,
a speech,
a look held too long,
or a sentence that ends exactly where it must.
Because choice, not truth alone, commands the art:
free will decides how the heart survives its telling.
—Tonya Snyder