The Dagger You Called Love

I grew up in a loving family who, in their own way,

had escaped some part of hell and knew little of heaven.

I grew up with a thousand people who loved me

and tried to fix themselves for me.

But changing oneself isn’t easy—

especially when you don’t see where you were wrong.

-

Ten years old —

that was when I first saw a glimpse of what you called love.

Ten years old was when I first had to clean up after you,

not knowing that was the beginning of most of my scars.

-

At first, you called it help.

Then you called it a lesson.

And by the end of it, it was a due.

-

“Give me this.”

“Do that.”

“Take control of yourself.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“At your age, I was already…”

“Pain and struggle — what do you know about them?”

-

Those were the phrases they kept saying.

Those were the abuses you started to normalize.

-

My house — no, your house.

What am I even saying?

Their house was always stuck

somewhere between the heaven you saw

and the hell we lived.

-

Keeping what you felt inside was not a rule,

but the law.

Even at ten years old,

I knew that.

-

Going against them was never a problem —

until it was.

And the problem kept changing

depending on who walked through that door.

-

Blind to it —

you wish I were.

And I wish you weren’t.

-

Finding the words to explain

took me longer than most.

Maybe because breaking the law

was always scarier than you thought.

-

You didn’t pierce me —

you handed them the dagger,

then watched them do it.

-

And you’re right —

they are your family.

How can we ask you to choose?

But you know you had to.

And choose you did.

-

“Wait a while,” you said.

But almost ten years have passed,

and you watched silently

as each one of them daggered us.

-

You called it tough love,

in your language.

It was parenting.

Or a life lesson.

-

In my head,

you were the sanest.

But I’m learning

that watching it happen is no better.

-

You blamed us for not speaking up,

but you taught us to speak up against monsters —

not villains,

not our blood.

-

And so you didn’t hear our voices,

because we never learned

that there were other languages.

-

And when my skin was on fire,

when my sister’s heart was broken,

when the hell they created burned us alive —

it wasn’t our voices that spoke,

but our souls.

-

You started to hear our echoes then,

because you never wanted to hear the screams.

-

So you stayed behind that door,

praying that heaven was upstairs,

while we became experts in surviving

-

the dagger you once dared to call love.