"I think it is a great lie that has been told to men

that women don’t understand them,

that their hearts beat at odds,

that their words tangle in some irretrievable confusion.

I think it is a great lie told to women

that men are not deeply feeling,

that their silence is a void

instead of a language learned through years

of being told not to speak their softness aloud.

I think the chasm between us

has been filled with the heavy stones of fallacy,

layered with fear,

stacked with stories of difference so stark

they eclipse the truth:

that the ache between us is not a failing

but a pulse of possibility.

When in fact,

our feelings are the rich rewards of a righteous rally,

a divine endeavor

to stitch ourselves closer than the seams of misunderstanding,

to tear down the walls built by borrowed doubt.

A wanting,

a yearning,

a call that hums beneath our skin.

We are not opposites.

We are mirrors,

each holding the reflection the other cannot quite name.

We are echoes,

whispering the same song in different tongues.

So let us unlearn the lies,

turn our faces to each other,

and see—not in halves,

but as two wholes

reaching,

rising,

rallying towards the union we’ve always deserved."

~Larson Langston

Art unknown

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