They carved at calm with careful hands,
Until the silence turned to flame
Then wore the mask of wounded hearts,
And whispered that I was to blame.

They measured virtue by my fall,
Ignoring every scar they made
For truth is often dressed in wounds,
While lies seek shelter in the shade.

But storms reveal more than they break
They show what patience chose to bear.
A soul can thunder once too long
When no one sees the weight it wears.

So judge not only how I rose,
Or by the anger you could see
Look first at every stone they threw
Before condemning what found me.

For even rivers, calm and clear,
Can rage when mountains block their way
The loudest echoes are not born
They're shaped by what the world will say.

And if my heart learned how to burn,
It wasn't born to love the fight
It simply carried too much dark
Before it ever found the light.

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.

André Berthiaume