Untitled

An untitled poem based on the theme 'Fear'. Namely, my own personal fear.

She’s standing there with pink bows
in her hair. And a dress to match.
She’s four years old.

I wish my thirteen-year-old self were here instead.
Or fifteen. Or seventeen.
At least it would be easier for her to understand.
At least she would know something.
But this one only blinks at me,
hands clasped behind her back
like she’s waiting to play a game.

I want to tell her about the body.
How one day it will feel like a house
with the wrong name on the mailbox.
How there will be mornings when
she will press her palms against her chest
and wish she could flatten it like dough or clay.
How she will look in the mirror
and feel something crawling beneath the skin,
something insistent,
something that does not match
the pink.

She does not know
that there will be days of shock,
then denial —
a quiet, stubborn refusal
to admit it’s boyhood knocking
inside the walls.

She tilts her head.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because I know
what you will try not to know.
Because peace will come,
but not before the splitting.

I also want to tell her that there will be friends.
You will think closeness
means holding tighter.
You will mistake intensity
for permanence.

You will have everything —
travel, school, rooms filled with light —
and still hold a hollow space
between your ribs.
Loneliness is not always
a lack of people.
Sometimes it is a lack of anchor.

You will speak before you measure.
You will not yet understand
why your mind outruns your restraint.
You will not yet have a word
for the way it moves.

Some bridges will burn.
Not because you lit them —
but because someone else
decided fire was safer than staying.
You will watch from the other side
as the smoke rises.
You will learn
how quiet a phone can become.
She frowns at the ground.
She does not know
what a bridge is for.

Suddenly I remember
when I was seven years old.
And my blood runs cold.
The third-grade classroom smelled of whiteboard markers
and its walls were adorned with laminated maps.
Other children drew trees —
branches thick with grandparents,
roots deep in villages
with names they could pronounce.

I drew a line.

Just a line.

That was the year I learned
migration did not always come
with a story attached.
That was the year I understood
the word adopted was not just about love —
but about before.
Before is a family
I cannot point to.

There was a room.
The door clicked shut like a decision
by a woman who ended up doing me so wrong.
There are places, she said coldly,
for children who don’t behave.

I remember the words locked up
more than the word sent away.
I remember the dark
more than the walls
and my fists pounding against them.
I remember screaming
until my throat felt like sandpaper.
I was seven years old.
I was eight.
I was a child.

She looks up at me now,
all pink and unfractured.
“Do I grow up big?”
Yes.
“Do people stay?”
Some do.
She doesn’t ask
if she was wanted.
She doesn’t know
that is the question.

I want to gather her into my arms
and tell her:
You will spend years wondering
if you are too much.
Too loud.
Too strange.
Too wrong.
Too different.

You will wonder
if people leave
because they finally see you clearly.
You will wonder
if being abnormal
was written into your bones.

But instead,
I think of the words from Mum and Dad.

Nothing changed.
You were always our daughter.
You were wanted.
You were meant to be with us.

The bows are still pink.
The dress still matches.
She is still standing there.
Four years old.
And for a moment —
just a moment —
the room is not dark.