No one named it. Not the days. Not the ache.
Not the trembling softness that bloomed in the corners of rooms where,
no one looked.
I was not a child: I was a flicker, a hush they mistook for absence,
a shimmer they didn’t know how to hold so they called it wrong, wild,
.
.
too much.
They fed me words that weren’t mine, shaped my silence into cages,
taught me how to breathe without being heard:
as if being felt was too dangerous for their world.
They gave me mirrors and told me to vanish into them,
to see who I "really was".
But what I saw... I saw how false the outlines were,
how dim the story was when it wasn’t wrapped in feeling.
I slept with my eyes open and my soul shut.
I kept my songs folded inside ribs that never finished growing.
And yet… even without a name, I held wonder.
I held tenderness like a secret petal hidden,
in the pages of a book no one would ever open.
I dreamed when no one watched.
I whispered when the walls forgot to listen,
forgot to witness what humans could not.
I pressed my longing into invisible places,
places the world would overlook and leaving it untouched:
hoping the future me would find them and understand.
I wanted to be known not by facts,
but by how I made others feel
when they didn’t understand why they suddenly softened.
I am not a history. I am not a past.
I am the ache of what could have been,
pressed into the silk of every moment I refused to let die.
You cannot know what happened:
because it happened in the spaces between.
And still,
I,
carry,
it.
Not as burden. But as vow.
To be the voice that never spoke:
but changed everything when it was felt...