They said silence was golden, but they never mentioned how heavy it could get.
The face on the wall is not screaming. Not quite. It’s the kind of expression that happens just after the scream stops. When the echo folds itself into your ribs, and the birds begin to fly out of your mouth because you can no longer hold anything in—not even the things you’ve never said.
No one remembers when the sky first cracked, but this face does.
You can see it in the grooves, carved not by time, but by memory.
This isn’t a man.
This is a monument to what we leave unsaid.
Look closer.
The eyes are hollow, not because they are empty—but because they’ve watched too much.
Seen the children forget the language of wonder.
Seen the poets become accountants.
Seen the watchers fall asleep in the middle of the awakening.
There’s no color here, just shadow and light fighting for space in a grayscale world.
Because the soul doesn’t always bleed in red—it can drain in silence, too.
And still… the birds.
White against the void, they lift from the mouth as if this broken being finally let go.
A secret?
A prayer?
A scream that turned itself into wings?
Maybe you’ve felt it. That tightness in your throat. The flutter before the confession.
We all have a flock in us, waiting.
Not just for freedom—but for acknowledgment.
The mouth is wide because it had to be.
Because the truth doesn’t always fit in delicate sentences.
Because liberation is rarely neat.
Hidden beneath the brush strokes is a truth they don’t teach in schools:
When we silence ourselves too long, our truths learn how to fly away without us.
And what’s left?
A face like this.
Part haunted.
Part holy.
Part doorway.
Do not look away.
This is the shape your silence might take one day.
But it doesn’t have to.
Let your birds out while they still remember your voice.
Before they forget they ever had one.
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