Nobody watches what goes on behind closed doors,
Yet they are so quick to judge the smiles we hide the cruel.
They see the laughter, the things we own,
And wonder how a heart could ever feel so alone.
They say we have everything,
A roof, a family, a place to call our own.
And perhaps we do.
But nobody asks what it costs a child
To grow up in a place where she never feels at home.
They say we are only facing what we see from outside,
And that we wouldn't say the same about our own.
But they haven't seen it all,
From the first little cracks to the walls that came down.
They haven't seen how a place meant to be a haven
Can become somewhere a child learns to drown in silence.
I was a child with a plushie in my hand.
I wasn't holding onto it because I was afraid.
It was held because I found myself trapped inside the fabric,
Somewhere between the stitches,
Where the world couldn't reach the little girl
Whose dreams had seen the present burn to ashes all over.
I wonder if anyone ever noticed
How carefully I held onto such a little thing.
How a child could find more comfort in something that couldn't speak
Than in the voices that were supposed to make her feel safe.
I didn't know how to ask for a different childhood.
I didn't even know childhood could feel different.
This isn't what you see, or what I lie about or glamourize.
There are dark lies that fly away with no bruises left to stain.
There are wounds that never find their way to the surface,
And children who grow up learning to call them ordinary.
I always thought if I could have all the scars as the proofs,
Perhaps someone would finally believe what I couldn't explain.
Since my heart is pierced, yet no blood has traced its pools,
And there is nothing to point at when they ask me for the evidence.
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How do you prove that something hurt
When the only thing left to show for it is who you became?
So I act the way I act. When they tell me to colour up,
They say black is my favourite colour, and I stay there in comfort.
They never wonder why I find peace in the absence of colour,
Why I don't always want the brightness they keep offering.
Perhaps black doesn't remind me of anything.
Perhaps that is precisely why I find comfort there.
They see a girl who has everything,
And I see a little girl who never knew what to do with all she was missing.
They count the things around her,
But never the things she needed and couldn't find.
They mistake her silence for distance,
Her ways for choices,
Her darkness for a personality.
And nobody thinks to look for the child underneath.
There are no leaves left on the tree,
A chopped one standing still.
It's still standing. It always will.
But I wonder if anyone remembers
What it looked like before it had to endure.
They call it fortunate because it still has roots.
They call it strong because it hasn't fallen.
They point at the standing tree and say,
'Look, it survived.'
But nobody asks if it ever wanted to be more
Than something that simply survived.
And perhaps that is the saddest part.
Not that the tree lost its leaves,
But that everyone kept admiring its branches
While the fire was still burning underneath.
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