"Unfiltered Speech"

Some people speak as if the world were built
to take every impact.
They spout their thoughts
the way a worker might drop tools on a bench

—not hostile, just unaware
of how sound travels.

In a café or queue,
you can feel the shift
when someone talks without softening.
A remark lands,
and everyone nearby adjusts,
as though a door had opened
onto weather no one expected.

Friends try to explain it:
They don’t mean harm.
And it’s true.
Their words arrive straight from the source,
without pause, hardly any shaping,
like a message sent before an envelope is found.

Others wish for gentler phrasing,
for a moment of consideration
before a thought is released

—to let conversation move

keeping the room steady
without sudden jolts and starts.

Yet there is something revealing

in this unfiltered way of speaking.
It shows how much we rely
on small adjustments we rarely notice

—the quiet work of choosing how to speak
so others can stay with what we say.

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