A silence becomes my fault.
A mistake becomes my burden.
Someone else’s wrongdoing
somehow finds its way back to me.
I take things too deeply—
until every decision has my name on it,
every consequence becomes a reflection of
who I am.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves.”
And perhaps I took Shakespeare too literally—
turning every star into a mirror,
every tragedy into an indictment.
I forget that not everything is a verdict.
Some things are simply things.
Someone can hurt me without my having deserved it.
Someone can disappoint me without it meaning
I was not enough.
A door can close
without asking me to become smaller.
Still, I feed my reality.
I give it fear
and it gives me evidence.
I give it guilt
and it gives me reasons.
I give it one unanswered question
and it builds an entire world around the silence.
Haslina Hassan is a poet based in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Her work explores memory, faith, and the quiet shifts between childhood and adulthood, often grounded in personal experience and social reflection. She writes on themes of empathy, resilience, and collective humanity, with several poems published in collaborative and independent works.