A storm asking for pity.
like a house that survived a fire,
yet still smells of smoke.
And while reading it, I kept thinking
some wounds are not knives,
they are architects.
They enter quietly.
move the walls of your mind inch by inch,
replace mirrors with glass,
turn laughter into evidence,
and teach a child to apologize
for taking up space.
A seed buried
still becomes a forest later.
People forget this because scars mature silently.
They think survival means healing,
when sometimes survival is only endurance
wearing clean clothes.
You ask how forgetting works.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe healing was never meant to be
an eraser
Maybe healing is when the memory
stops becoming a landlord
inside your ribs.
Maybe one day his voice will shrink
into nothing more than an old radio
playing in another apartment
but no longer capable
of commanding your heartbeat
Because the terrifying thing about cruelty
is not always the act itself.
You are not mourning anymore
You are mourning the version of yourself
who learned fear before she learned softness.
The little girl who stood in front of invisible mirrors
trying to scrape shame off her skin
with bare hands.
But
A child blaming herself for being hurt
is like a flower apologizing
for the storm.
You ask “How do I forget without neglecting my little self?”
You don’t.
You sit beside her.
just because the world became impatient
with her grief
You let her speak fully this time.
Because memory is strange
the body keeps records
even when the calendar moves forward.
A trembling hand,
a racing chest,
a sleepless night
sometimes these are
still trying to protect someone
who is no longer trapped there.
And the wrist marks you mentioned
they do not read like weakness to a reader.
A human being once stood
at the edge of unbearable pain
and still remained alive long enough
to write this poem.
More than you realize.
Your poem carries the weight of someone
who kept drowning quietly
while the world called it just childhood
But rivers remember mountains
long after leaving them.
Hearing his name
and no longer feeling your soul
drop like shattered glass.
Looking in the mirror
without searching for evidence against yourself.
Smiling again
without guilt interrupting it.
And understanding, slowly, painfully
that the child he damaged
grew into someone capable