NEPHART.COM

You are not serious about anything

she used to say

and somewhere inside me

I knew she was touching a wound

I had never learned to cover

When my friends jumped ropes

like they were racing toward something

I sat with the knots

my fingers tracing

where the rope had twisted against itself

finding the trouble

before anyone else knew

there was trouble

I could never jump far enough

The rope was innocent

it never hated me

it was my leap

that always arrived

a second too late

She said love was not enough

said I was not serious

Every woman I met

had to endure my endless maps of love

how it slips through closed hands

how money can buy a house

but cannot persuade a heart to stay

how freedom is the first language of love

and every cage

no matter how beautiful

eventually becomes a cage

I spoke as though I had seen an ocean

to people who believed fish were decorations

something to watch through glass

something to feed

something to own

never something that belonged

to the endless dark water beyond the shore

I was not serious about money either

I spent it carelessly

on train journeys with no destination

on one more cup of tea

on conversations that stretched past midnight

on those rare hours

when another human being

opened a hidden door inside themselves

and trusted me enough

to step through it

I never understood people

who carried another person’s secrets

like trophies

who confused gossip with connection

and called that intimacy

I spent everything

time

attention

wonder

faith

I invested in voices

in moments

in souls

certain they would remain

Most of them vanished

like footprints

at the edge of the sea

And every disappearance

returned with the same verdict

You are not serious

You were never serious

You should have been serious

For years

I carried those words

like stones in my pockets

until one day

I imagined the Joker

that broken smile

that face carved from laughter and pain

leaning close enough to ask

Why so serious

And for the first time

the question did not sound foolish

Maybe I was never meant

for the seriousness they wanted

the seriousness of counting

of measuring

of weighing every moment

against its reward

Maybe I was chasing things

that could never be counted

Maybe I was searching for wonder

while everyone else

was searching for certainty

So I will stop defending myself

I will stop trying to explain

I will stop apologising

for the shape of my heart

I was not serious

Not about money

Not about status

Not about winning

Not about becoming someone

the world could easily understand

I was serious about beauty

serious about love

serious about listening

serious about standing beside another soul

without trying to own it

And perhaps that is why

I looked so careless

Because sincerity wears lighter clothes

than ambition

Because wonder travels

with empty hands

Because the deepest things in life

cannot be carried

only lived

I was not serious

And somehow

in all that lightness

I was the most sincere person

in the room