The Unspoken Language Poem by Steven Larue

I remember a girl with raven hair.
They called her stubborn.
They called her strange.
But I watched her speak in a language
no one cared to learn.

On the playground, the sun blazed hot on the asphalt,
kids screamed like sirens,
balls slammed against walls,
whistles cut the air like knives.
And there she was—
walking on her toes,
not out of clumsiness,
but out of instinct,
as if the ground burned beneath her,
as if only the tips of her feet
could touch this world without breaking her.

She lined pebbles beside the chain-link fence,
not scattered, not careless,
lined them with precision—
rows and constellations,
tiny planets orbiting in her hands.
To her, it wasn't gravel.
It was order.
It was safety.
It was proof that in a world that spun too fast,
she could still set something in place.

The teachers sighed—
that soft, heavy sigh adults use
when they've already decided you're a problem.
They thought her silence was defiance,
her ritual was a flaw.
But when the laughter rose like crashing glass,
when the shrieks stabbed her ears
and she dropped to the ground, hands pressed tight,
I knew it wasn't weakness.
It was survival.
Tell me—
if thunder shook your bones,
would you not cover your ears?

They said she was "difficult."
I saw discipline.
They said she was "childish."
I saw courage—
to guard her peace
in a place that offered her none.

One day, a chair in the classroom was out of line.
Crooked. Slanted. Wrong.
She cried, "It's not right! "
Her voice cracked, body trembling.
The class laughed.
The teacher frowned.
But I watched her face.
Her world was a tapestry,
and that chair was the loose thread.
Pull one stitch,
the whole design unravels.
Is that stubbornness—
or is it clarity the rest of us can't see?

She spun in circles on the grass at recess,
her hair a black halo,
her arms open to the sky.
Her fingers fluttered like wings,
not nonsense—
but flight.
A ritual of calm,
a rhythm her body knew
even when her mind was on fire.

The others pointed.
They snickered behind their hands.
But I—
I couldn't look away.
If joy had a shape,
maybe it looked like her spin.
If resilience had a sound,
maybe it was the hum
she sang under her breath
when the world became too loud.

Years later,
when I stand in a crowd
and the noise claws at my chest,
when the lights cut sharp against my eyes,
I remember her.
I remember the stones.
I remember the chair.
I remember that dance on the grass.

And I think—
she was never broken.
Never stubborn.
Never less.
She was galaxies in pebbles.
She was thunder held back with small hands.
She was a dancer writing poems in air.
She was a truth no stereotype could contain.

And the loudest lesson she ever taught me—
without ever saying a word—
was this:
To find your own peace
in a world that demands your silence
is the most powerful language of all.