After He Drove Away

I’m sorry

to the barefoot child on the steps,

watching taillights bleed into the horizon,

already tightening her bones

for the storm that always rose

when his shadow disappeared.

I’m sorry

to the one struck by silent disapproval

disguised as discipline,

phone books slamming down

because your laughter was too alive,

because the sound of you

threatened their small, controlled world.

I’m sorry

to the child who ran home with lungs on fire,

backpack thudding like a target,

schoolyard wolves snapping at her heels.

You measured distance in heartbeats and hiding places,

learned to disappear before the bell even stopped ringing.

No one saw the deep bruises carved by laughter

or the worthlessness braided into your every step.

I’m sorry

to the teenager made of wildfire

and fists of thunder,

trapped in a house of locked doors

and unspoken terms.

You swallowed tempests whole

so the walls would not splinter.

I’m sorry

to the woman turned statue on that cold floor

when death took the last witness

to who you might have been.

When he left this world

something in you folded itself into ash.

I’m sorry

to the young, bright wanderer

with a backpack of fear,

walking foreign streets

where dark alleys concealed monsters.

You survived solely on the echoes of his voice,

on the warnings he stitched

into the lining of your courage.

I’m sorry

to the party girl who poured herself a disguise,

glass after glass of forgetting,

hoping the burn in your throat

would drown the ghosts of childhood

who slept with their boots on.

I’m sorry

to the new mother in her thirties

who tried to plant galaxies in barren soil,

married to he who cursed the stars

the moment they were born.

You gathered those stars in your arms

and walked barefoot through the ruins,

carrying your lives out of the wreckage

that was never meant to let you leave.

I’m sorry

to the woman who mistook manipulation for devotion,

who called the ache in her ribs a kind of love

because no one showed her another language.

You lived inside a cage built of apologies and fear,

your voice wrapped in his anger,

your body a map of places pain had claimed.

You stayed in the maw of regret

because no one taught you

that leaving is learning to stand on air,

to run with broken feet.

And to every version of you,

the hidden, the howling, the hunted,

I hear you now.

Lay your armor down.

Your watch is over.

From here forward

I’ve got us, darling.

I will break trail now

for you, and for each one of us they tried to bury.