The Tragic Man

(Who hangs his smiling face and says “shame”)

He will speak of shame.
How heavy it was.
How it silenced him.
How it kept him from saying what he really wanted to say.

And this sounds, at first, like accountability.

But accountability does not grandstand.

Because shame that leads to silence— while the behaviour continues uninterrupted— is not remorse.

It is interior decoration, like a velvet curtain drawn over a door that never closes.