To Whom It Concerns—and it concerns you all,

They call me the villain.

Not because I wear a crown of thorns or command thunder,
but because I stopped apologizing for existing in my own skin.
You turned your gaze toward me,
and where you didn’t understand,
you colored me dark,
drew fangs where there were lips.

I once clapped for you.
Laughed with you.
Stood at the edge of my own dreams to make room for yours.
And when I fell silent,
when I curled inward to heal,
you called it distance.
Then defiance.
Then danger.

I watched your words spin— villain, selfish, dramatic, cruel.
Your chorus found rhythm in my silence.
You rehearsed your lines with such conviction, that I forgot the script I once wrote for myself.

Well, allow me to write it again.

I am not the poison.
I am the girl who tasted it and lived.
Not fire-breather, not monster.
But if I must breathe flames to survive,
then so be it.

Yes, my wings are broken— but they didn’t fall off, they were ripped.
And I stitched them back with thread made of my own poetry.
So if I fly crooked, don’t marvel—just know I am still in the sky.

I am the villain in your story because I dared to become the hero in mine.
And I refuse to apologize for it.

If I frighten you, it’s only because my voice has grown louder than the silence you hoped would keep me tame.

With unrepentant breath and scarlet ink,
—Me