Red.
It’s not pretty on me.
Not lipstick.
Not Valentines hearts.
Not cute red sweaters or “you’re so strong compliments.”
My red is the kind that stains.
That sticks.
That screams when I try to whisper.
Red is the colour of being left.
Not once.
But over and over and over.
My mum?
Yeah, my bio mum.
She left like I was a book she stopped
reading halfway through.
But she still sends postcards.
Like that makes it better.
Like writing, “Love, Mum” at the end
wipes away the years that she wasn’t there
to love me at all.
Do you know what it feels like
to get a message from a ghost
trying to pretend she’s still real?
I don’t read them anymore.
I just stare at the handwriting and
feel nothing.
Or maybe too much.
I can’t tell the difference anymore.
Red is the rage I swallow
because screaming makes people
uncomfortable.
Because no one wants to hear
about the kid sent to boarding school at 11
like an inconvenience.
Shipped off.
Silenced.
Discarded.
Dad didn’t even fight.
Just handed me over
to a woman who never saw me as hers
and made sure I knew it.
Red is the silence between us now.
And it’s loud.
So loud it drowns out the sound of me breaking.
But the worst red?
The darkest?
Wasn’t just what they did.
It was what they took.
Two men.
People I trusted.
People who smiled at me like I mattered
before they ruined me.
I said no.
I said stop.
But they didn’t hear me—
because they weren’t listening.
They were taking.
And one of them carved a word
into my skin.
A word I won’t repeat.
Because it’s still there.
Because when I shower, I still trace it.
Like it might come off this time.
It never does.
Red is that word.
That memory.
That version of me
that I don’t know how to bring back.
Sometimes I look in the mirror
and all I see is what they left behind.
I’m still here.
Yeah.
Breathing.
Just barely.
But I think about giving it all up.
More than I say out loud.
More than anyone would guess
by the way I smile in hallways
and laugh when I’m dying inside.
Red is the part of me that wants to vanish.
That writes poems
because if I don’t put it on the page,
I might not survive the weight.
Red is major depression.
C-PTSD.
It’s waking me up and wondering why.
Why me.
Why still.
Why now.
It’s wanting someone to hold me and mean it.
Wanting my mum to show up
in something more than postage stamps and pretend love.
Wanting my dad to say,
“I was wrong. I should’ve kept you close.”
But knowing they won’t.
Knowing they didn’t.
Red is the truth no one wants to hear.
The pain they skip over in movies.
The girl in the back of the class
with scars on her heart and skin
who’s just trying to get through the day
without breaking apart in front of everyone.
Red is me.
All of me.
Hurting.
But still breathing.
Still here.
Not because I'm strong.
Not because I want to be.
But because even though everything in me says give up,
some tiny voice
buried under the rubble
still whispers:
Wait.
14:53pm / If I could sleep through the entire school holidays, that would be amazing
