Man

 There is a certain kind of silence that follows a broken man—a quiet so deep it echoes. It’s not the absence of words but the weight of them, unspoken, lodged in his throat like shards of glass.   He walks through life like a ghost, present but unseen. His laughter is hollow, his smiles rehearsed. The world moves around him, but he is stuck in the wreckage of what was, or what could have been.   People ask him, *"Are you okay?"* and he nods, because the truth is too heavy to share. How do you explain that you are a mosaic of fractures, held together by nothing but habit? How do you describe the emptiness that gnaws at your ribs, the memories that play like a broken record in your skull?   A broken man is not always weeping. Sometimes, he is numb. He goes through the motions—work, meals, conversations—but he is not there. His heart is a battlefield, littered with the debris of lost love, betrayal, failure.   But here’s the thing about broken ...