Red.
It’s not pretty on me.
Not lipstick.
Not Valentines hearts.
Not cute red sweaters or “you’re so strong compliments.”

My red is the kind that stains.
That sticks.
That screams when I try to whisper.
Red is the colour of being left.
Not once.
But over and over and over.

My mum?
Yeah, my bio mum.
She left like I was a book she stopped
reading halfway through.
But she still sends postcards.
Like that makes it better.
Like writing, “Love, Mum” at the end
wipes away the years that she wasn’t there
to love me at all.

Do you know what it feels like
to get a message from a ghost
trying to pretend she’s still real?

I don’t read them anymore.
I just stare at the handwriting and
feel nothing.
Or maybe too much.
I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Red is the rage I swallow
because screaming makes people
uncomfortable.
Because no one wants to hear
about the kid sent to boarding school at 11
like an inconvenience.
Shipped off.
Silenced.
Discarded.

Dad didn’t even fight.
Just handed me over
to a woman who never saw me as hers
and made sure I knew it.

Red is the silence between us now.
And it’s loud.
So loud it drowns out the sound of me breaking.

But the worst red?
The darkest?

Wasn’t just what they did.
It was what they took.
Two men.
People I trusted.
People who smiled at me like I mattered
before they ruined me.

I said no.
I said stop.
But they didn’t hear me—
because they weren’t listening.
They were taking.

And one of them carved a word
into my skin.
A word I won’t repeat.
Because it’s still there.
Because when I shower, I still trace it.
Like it might come off this time.
It never does.

Red is that word.
That memory.
That version of me
that I don’t know how to bring back.
Sometimes I look in the mirror
and all I see is what they left behind.

I’m still here.
Yeah.
Breathing.
Just barely.

But I think about giving it all up.
More than I say out loud.
More than anyone would guess
by the way I smile in hallways
and laugh when I’m dying inside.

Red is the part of me that wants to vanish.
That writes poems
because if I don’t put it on the page,
I might not survive the weight.

Red is major depression.  
C-PTSD.
It’s waking me up and wondering why.
Why me.
Why still.
Why now.

It’s wanting someone to hold me and mean it.
Wanting my mum to show up
in something more than postage stamps and pretend love.
Wanting my dad to say,
“I was wrong. I should’ve kept you close.”
But knowing they won’t.
Knowing they didn’t.

Red is the truth no one wants to hear.
The pain they skip over in movies.
The girl in the back of the class
with scars on her heart and skin
who’s just trying to get through the day
without breaking apart in front of everyone.

Red is me.
All of me.
Hurting.
But still breathing.
Still here.

Not because I'm strong.
Not because I want to be.
But because even though everything in me says give up,
some tiny voice
buried under the rubble
still whispers:
Wait.

growing and fall is all i do
stuck to the branch of this tree
i sway in the summer breeze
but by fall i have to leave

always arriving, always leaving
swaying in the summer breeze
i want to hold on for a bit longer,
but by fall i must leave

i yearn for an eternal summer
i yearn for winds like these
my whole life an act of letting go
because by fall i must leave

she wore that dress for you tonight
she played that song for you
she had only you in her sight
she thought she had you

when the morning light woke her
she imagined it was you
when you gone and left her
she thought she had you

she wanted to put in the effort
she didn't know about you
kicked her in the mud, the dirt
while she thought she had you

and she finally believed for once
she believed in you
you must've not known that
she thought she had you

One week since you've gone
Day by day I yearn
I wait for your return
Am and night, I sit silently
Gonna be there a bit longer
Grow as a person eventually, but
Wings take time to create

what a sick coincidence
some cruel ******* joke
crafted by the god
he so desperately believes in


why would he want me
when he has two daughters
one he’s molding into everything
i refuse to become


the other still clings to his shadow
like it’ll keep her warm
telling me to be more forgiving
as if he ever earned a single ounce of grace


where was he when i needed a father
not a ghost with loud opinions


he disappeared
then returned
acting like he deserved applause for showing up late
to a life he walked out on


you don’t get to pick which parts of me you accept
and still try and call it love


i’m done pretending this day holds any weight
that it means anything more
than a simple *******


i made it without you
and that is the only thing
worth celebrating

Here, I’m still waiting on the rising,
But again, I go fading out of sight.
I guess, to you, it must be surprising,
How I was gone before sparks ignite.

Blowing- free flowing- in your direction,
Cut short by a sudden change in wind,
Gusts trade vision with my projection.
Reversing in confusion- now I rescind.

For it’s you who holds my attention,
But by a selfish means of protection,
Had me leaving before a storm began.
I can see I was creating a rejection
But there really wasn’t even a plan.
My patterns of impulse and projection
Regrettably have led to your doubt,
And damage to a wholesome connection.
I admit- I reeled you in, I spit you out.

But I didn’t mean to be deceiving-
I’m just a little abandoned and abused
Was never good with people leaving,
Sorry I left you bruised and confused.

They say I’m lucky
to be here.
Boarding school.
Safe.
Fed.
Books in my hands,
a roof that doesn’t leak.
But luck feels like a cruel joke
when you cry in a bed
no one tucked you into.

My stepmom’s voice doesn’t need to travel far—
it lives in me now.
“You’re too much.”
“You ruin everything.”
“No wonder your mother left.”
And I hate how fast I believe her.
How deep those words go.

Because my real mum did leave.
Not by accident.
Not by death.
She left because she didn’t want to be a mum.
Not my mum.
Not with me in the picture.
Fifteen years old
and I still wonder
what it was about me
that made her walk away.

Was I born too loud?
Too soft?
Too inconvenient to keep?

She sends postcards sometimes.
From places I’ve never been.
Smiling in sunglasses,
signing with love
like she remembers what that means.
But love doesn’t show up twice a year
and forget your birthday.

So I sit here,
in classrooms where no one knows
why I flinch at kindness,
why I don't raise my hand.
They don’t see the girl
who keeps herself small
so she won’t be sent away again.

I imagine the van sometimes—
that guy with the dog and the dust roads.
I imagine running,
not toward something,
but away.
From the house that wasn’t mine.
From the voice that broke me.
From the silence my mother left behind.

But what if I never run?
What if I just grow older
and colder,
wearing a mask that looks like success
but feels like surviving?

What if I stay here—
the girl left behind twice,
too scared to dream,
too used to being unwanted
to believe she could ever be more?

What if I don’t make it—
and no one notices
because they never expected me to
in the first place?