The Weight Beneath the Brim

This poem is about survival, but also about slowly realizing that just because something is beautiful doesn’t mean it’s kind.

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I wear the brim low not for style, but to silence the ache—

the weight of a feather sewn with severity, the kind of beauty that punishes,

looped with ribbon and riddled with regret, a crown stitched by consequence,

and no one ever asks what it teaches to carry something so elegant and cruel.

You see adornment—I see atonement,

because this hat was hers once, the one who called me clever with a clenched jaw,

the one who believed discipline was love disguised in velvet thorns,

and I learned early how illusion can lace itself into anything,

how enchantment doesn't sparkle—it suffocates.

Each morning, I place it on my head like a ritual of remembrance,

a slow exhale into the disoriented fog where memory and obedience blur,

where her voice still rings like the sound of dry fabric tearing.

She said posture mattered,

that my silence was a ribbon to be tightened until I could speak only what pleased,

but the feather still shivers when I tremble,

and I wonder if even it is tired of pretending this is power,

when all it ever did was teach me how to disappear with dignity.