The Girl Beneath

She learned to smile when it hurt the most,

to laugh so softly no one could hear the ghost.

They said, “Be grateful, child, be still, behave.”

and she folded herself into the shape they craved.

A preacher’s granddaughter, halo too tight,

schooled in shame and Sunday light.

They called her blessed, they called her good,

But holiness never felt the way it should.

She hid her voice in the seams of her skin,

learned that quiet was safer than sin.

Her pain became prayer, her tears a disguise,

a sermon delivered behind her eyes.

They called her strong,

not knowing that strength was surviving the wrong.

She learned to love men who spoke like storms,

who worshiped control and called it “norms.”

Every promise was a chain dressed as grace,

every kiss a bruise she learned to erase.

She carried her children like fragile breath,

rocked them between guilt and death.

When the world took them,

It didn’t even flinch.

She drank the silence down by the inch.

Drugs whispered what people never did:

"You’re still here, you still live".

But every high became a hiding place,

a mask with her mother’s face.

She met monsters who smiled with kind eyes,

who built altars from their lies.

They called her crazy until she believed,

made her question every scar she received.

Her body, a weapon turned on itself

her mind, a shelf of shattered selves.

Now she sleeps with the lights on low,

sees ghosts only she can know.

Her husband says, “You’re safe, it’s done.”

But, she still jumps at the sound of the sun.

Because peace feels foreign.

Love feels thin.

The war is quiet,

but it rages within.

Some nights, she whispers to the girl she was

the one who hid, the one who does.

“I’m still here,” she says to the dark,

watching the mirror refuse to spark.

And the mask stays on

not out of fear,

but because she no longer knows

which face is real.