There was a house where the silence screamed, where footsteps were warnings and breath meant war, she learned the language of the floorboards, how each groan spelled danger, how shadows could hold their breath and become a man.
A basement where time forgot to move, where light curled back on itself and everything smelled like rot and rust, and the end of innocence.
Each day the sun rose somewhere else, not here, here, he waited - with a voice that smiled and hands that lied, he dragged her down like some dark ritual, her legs small, her resistance smaller.
The air was thick with mildew and menace, and every creak of the stairs was a countdown.
She knew the sound of his zipper better than she knew her own voice, it came before the hand, before the hush, before her name was twisted into a thing she didn't recognize - "so cute", he whispered, his sour breath staining her cheek, his palm sealing her scream like a grave before the burial.
Her body a locked cabinet he broke open anyway, her mouth pressed shut by his hand, so tight she thought she'd disappear beneath it, her name became a curse only he could say.
Seven years is a long time to be dead but still breathing, a long time to collect bruises you can't point to, to count the days by how deeply you dissociate, to lie in bed, waiting for the footsteps, learning to pray in silence, learning that God had turned his face away.
And the walls - they were good at keeping secrets, the cement heard everything but never wept - not like her.
Her bones still ache with memory, each rib a frozen branch, cracking beneath the weight of winter, her heart shattered on repeat - like glassware dropped in slow motion that no one bothers to clean up.
"Don't cry, you'll wake up the house", but the house was already awake, it learned to listen like she did - without flinching.
The nightmares bloom nightly, sheets soaked with fear, her breath a stuttered, shattered siren, she wakes choking on the echoes of a voice she was never allowed to use.
Pain is a language, and she became fluent, she learned to smile with empty eyes, to eat silence for dinner and fear for dessert, she learned to scrub herself raw, but she still feel him clinging in places water couldn't reach, fingerprints etched into her skin.
She was a child, but not really - not after that, her toys became tombstones, her bed, a battlefield, sleep was a place she couldn't get to without barbed wire dreams.
She wakes now, still - drenched in panic, sheets soaked through like she'd been drowning all night, and maybe she was, maybe she always am.
Because healing doesn't come like spring, it comes like winter forgetting to leave, some mornings, her bones scream before she move, memories frozen, crying herself to sleep on repeat.
She carry ghosts inside her skin, they press through when the world is too loud, too close, she flinches at kindness, she distrust calm.
But even now, in this thicket of remembering, a part of her whispers, "you lived", and she did, not gently, not untouched, not completely.
She lived when no one heard her, she lived when love meant chains, she lived through every slammed door, every silenced scream, every time she thought death would be easier.
She lived, and she's still here, crumpled, yes, but breathing, bent, not broken, she is the aftermath that keeps growing - a wild, ruined garden refusing to die.