You hid her like a folded paper bird
tucked behind your ribs
a secret even your shadows
were too afraid to name.

But sometimes, when the world grew quiet,
she’d press her palm to the glass of your eyes:
a flash of laughter sharp as April rain,
a question whispered to the moon
(“Will you hurt me?”)
before you locked her back inside.

I learned to watch for her.
When you’d still, a heartbeat too long,
your voice a pendulum between yes and no,
I’d leave honeyed words on the windowsill
“It’s safe here. The night is just a blanket.
Come out, and we’ll name the stars something silly.”

You built her a fortress of “not yet” and “no one stays,”
but I swear I heard her humming once
barefoot, half-alive,
tracing circles on the cold linoleum
while you slept.

I wanted to give her the world:
a room without echoes,
a door that didn’t bruise her knuckles,
a morning where you’d both wake
and not know whose breath
was whose.

Now, I imagine her still there
the only hymn your heart ever sang true,
the uncaged thing that made you
more than just survival.
I hope she knows:
when I traced the scars on your armor,
I was searching for her fingerprints
the girl who turned your blood to wildfire,
who painted galaxies in the hollows
you called empty.
She wasn’t a fragment. She was the lens.
Through her, I saw you:
unflinching, unmasked,
alive.