Memories

You call them shadows, I call them years

Echoes too sharp, spinning old fears

I hold memories close, quiet and bruised

Mornings of silence, affection refused

Your words soft now, glossed and pert

Erasing the moments that left me hurt

“You’re imagining things. That wasn’t me.”

Yet my bones remember, eyes can’t unsee

Hands that trembled under your gaze

Stories you edit, facts you rearrange

My mind is fractured by gaslight’s glow

Haunted by truths you want no one to know

I recount the yelling, the slamming doors

You stitch new versions, patch up the sores

“None of that happened, why dwell on pain?”

You repaint it all, then begin again

Old perfume lingers, sparking distress

A scent that knows what time can’t suppress

And while you rewrite, deny and defend

I gather the pieces you try to amend

I know my memories are mine

Even when you blur the edges, redraw the lines

For the secrets I carry and the scars I own

Built the woman I am, the woman I know