Sam & I AM

They say still waters run deep but no one warned the child, who learned to survive by going silent. She found out early noise can be dangerous. So she whispered in corners, spoke with glances, folded her voice until it was nothing, hiding scars from silenced second chances. The first time she screamed, it wasn’t just her words that disappeared. The echo of their goodbye was all that she could hear. There was no one searching, no sirens or an alarm, no “breaking news” as her presence was erased, just:

Little. Girl. Gone. 

She became a ghost with tan skin, lost in between cool breezes and salty tides, unraveling out of sight, while poison erased her mind. As if destined, she found the only thing that could ever hold her, concrete walls, cold and made of stone. Safe now, and counting days, finally, she found a home. The concrete doesn’t lie. It holds more honesty than any freedom. So, she stitched the solitude to her soul and the cell into a kingdom.

I am not the storm; I am that moment just before thunder. I am the match that remembers what it cost to be struck. Another statistic, another number. You say I move with so much grace, but who’s ever asked what haunts my face? They call me calm. They call me kind. Not seeing the monster my voice is trapped behind. Like stepping through broken glass, I chose my words with fearsome care, because most of the time, I still feel there. 

See the walls don’t show but they don’t fade, just have shaped the way my bones are made. So I carry this mask, to meet expectations while smiling politely in quiet desperation. But if you just stop for a moment, be still with me and listen, only then will you understand, it’s not my words you are missing. You will hear my scream rising in stages, still trying to escape these invisible cages.