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
