#foster - Hello Poetry

I do not remember feeling safe. I remember learning how to endure. I remember the click of a lock from the outside. The way a doorknob becomes decoration when you are small and no one is coming back soon. A room can shrink when it knows you cannot leave it. Walls breathe differently. Light moves too slowly. Time forgets you. I remember pressing my ear to the door just to hear proof of life on the other side. I remember nights in the car— windows cracked for air, seatbelt buckles pressing into my spine, streetlights flickering like tired guardians— while my parents worked and the world kept moving without noticing the child curled in the backseat. I learned the shape of engines cooling. The rhythm of tires passing. How to sleep lightly so no one would catch me unprepared. This is what my body remembers: confinement. Waiting. The hum of survival. Years of it. Years of love that felt like a transaction. Years of being told I was too much while being given far too little. When I was old enough to name it abuse, I was also old enough to be put out. Garbage bags of clothes. Couches that were not mine. Strangers’ houses where I memorized exits before I memorized their names. There is a battle inside me no one applauds. It is quiet. Relentless. It asks every morning: Are you staying today? After fifteen— after almost not making it— every birthday feels like a glitch. Like I slipped past an ending that was meant to take me. Candles feel heavy in my hands. Celebration feels suspicious. Joy feels like something I have to justify. I carry this strange guilt for surviving. As if I stole a future from someone more worthy. I live now in my own place— small, imperfect, mine in name at least— and sometimes I still feel like I am waiting for someone to lock the door from the outside. Freedom is fragile when your nervous system still thinks it is trapped. I am tired of survival being my only talent. Tired of flinching at softness. Tired of believing I do not deserve to grow older. I do not want my youth to dissolve into fear. I want proof that I lived— not just endured. Maybe the child in the locked room did not survive so that I could keep punishing myself for breathing. Maybe the one sleeping in the backseat under humming streetlights did not hold on so that I could believe I was a mistake. I am still here. Not unscarred. Not untouched. Not always certain. But here. And maybe that is not theft. Maybe that is defiance. Maybe every birthday is not a reminder I should have died— but evidence that I didn’t.

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Feb 14

Feb 14, 2026 at 2:50 AM UTC

Amy_lynn

What the Body Remembers

I do not remember feeling safe. I remember learning how to endure. I remember the click of a lock from the outside. The way a doorknob becomes decoration when you are small and no one is coming back soon. A room can shrink when it knows you cannot leave it. Walls breathe differently. Light moves too slowly. Time forgets you. I remember pressing my ear to the door just to hear proof of life on the other side. I remember nights in the car— windows cracked for air, seatbelt buckles pressing into my spine, streetlights flickering like tired guardians— while my parents worked and the world kept moving without noticing the child curled in the backseat. I learned the shape of engines cooling. The rhythm of tires passing. How to sleep lightly so no one would catch me unprepared. This is what my body remembers: confinement. Waiting. The hum of survival. Years of it. Years of love that felt like a transaction. Years of being told I was too much while being given far too little. When I was old enough to name it abuse, I was also old enough to be put out. Garbage bags of clothes. Couches that were not mine. Strangers’ houses where I memorized exits before I memorized their names. There is a battle inside me no one applauds. It is quiet. Relentless. It asks every morning: Are you staying today? After fifteen— after almost not making it— every birthday feels like a glitch. Like I slipped past an ending that was meant to take me. Candles feel heavy in my hands. Celebration feels suspicious. Joy feels like something I have to justify. I carry this strange guilt for surviving. As if I stole a future from someone more worthy. I live now in my own place— small, imperfect, mine in name at least— and sometimes I still feel like I am waiting for someone to lock the door from the outside. Freedom is fragile when your nervous system still thinks it is trapped. I am tired of survival being my only talent. Tired of flinching at softness. Tired of believing I do not deserve to grow older. I do not want my youth to dissolve into fear. I want proof that I lived— not just endured. Maybe the child in the locked room did not survive so that I could keep punishing myself for breathing. Maybe the one sleeping in the backseat under humming streetlights did not hold on so that I could believe I was a mistake. I am still here. Not unscarred. Not untouched. Not always certain. But here. And maybe that is not theft. Maybe that is defiance. Maybe every birthday is not a reminder I should have died— but evidence that I didn’t.