There was a softness once,
an innocence,
light enough to mistake for hope.
It was taken.
Now her body remembers first
before thought, before breath
a tightening, a warning,
a door that never fully closes.
Her voice is somewhere far off, or maybe locked within,
buried under the weight of silence,
pressing, pressing
never breaking through.
Inside, something splits without sound.
Not clean. Not quick.
A slow tearing
that keeps happening, again and again
Somewhere between dusk and dawn
long after it should be over.
Her body forgets it can refuse.
Everything narrows
to endurance.
There is a moment
always a moment
where she leaves herself behind,
watches from the ceiling tiles she counted
as if it might hurt less that way.
It doesn’t.
An echo lingers into the next day
a crawling under the skin,
a hot sticky stain that won’t stay still,
a pulse of wrongness
she cannot scrub out.
After, the world resumes its shape
as if nothing has been taken,
as if nothing is missing.
But something is always missing.
And underneath it all,
a low, constant whisper
not loud enough to hear,
not soft enough to ignore
telling her
she will never be whole.
Apr 24
Apr 24, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC
There was a softness once,
an innocence,
light enough to mistake for hope.
It was taken.
Now her body remembers first
before thought, before breath
a tightening, a warning,
a door that never fully closes.
Her voice is somewhere far off, or maybe locked within,
buried under the weight of silence,
pressing, pressing
never breaking through.
Inside, something splits without sound.
Not clean. Not quick.
A slow tearing
that keeps happening, again and again
Somewhere between dusk and dawn
long after it should be over.
Her body forgets it can refuse.
Everything narrows
to endurance.
There is a moment
always a moment
where she leaves herself behind,
watches from the ceiling tiles she counted
as if it might hurt less that way.
It doesn’t.
An echo lingers into the next day
a crawling under the skin,
a hot sticky stain that won’t stay still,
a pulse of wrongness
she cannot scrub out.
After, the world resumes its shape
as if nothing has been taken,
as if nothing is missing.
But something is always missing.
And underneath it all,
a low, constant whisper
not loud enough to hear,
not soft enough to ignore
telling her
she will never be whole.