There is a lamb inside the body.
Soft thing.
Small thing.
Something that still startles
when a hand moves too quickly.
And there is blood on its wool.
Not all of it belongs to the lamb.
That is the first thing
no one teaches you:
how a creature can be innocent
and still look guilty
after enough hands have touched it.
So it learns two languages.
The first is trembling.
The second is teeth.
There is anger in the jaw
that never quite makes it
to the mouth.
Anger at the sigh.
Anger at the pause.
Anger at the message left unanswered,
the door closed differently,
the laugh from across the room,
the warmth that suddenly isn\'t warm enough.
Such microscopic wounds.
Such astronomical weather.
Everything enters the body
magnified.
A pinprick becomes a gunshot.
A silence becomes abandonment.
A stranger\'s expression
becomes a tribunal.
And still—
nothing is said.
The anger is folded smaller.
Smaller.
Smaller.
Until it fits beneath the tongue.
Until the tongue bleeds from carrying it.
There are other hungers, too.
The body becomes a house
with too many unlocked rooms.
Some nights it begs
to be hurt.
Some nights it begs
to be wanted.
Sometimes it cannot tell
the difference.
So affection becomes a matchstick.
Attention becomes a bloodstream.
Desire becomes another language
for please don\'t leave.
And afterward—
the same old animal
curls beneath the ribs,
ashamed of having teeth,
ashamed of having hunger,
ashamed of having survived
by becoming fluent
in whatever kept the darkness
from swallowing it whole.
Still, the lamb remains.
Still, it bares its canines.
What a strange creature—
a thing made gentle
by force,
a thing made feral
by necessity.
It learned early
that softness does not always protect you.
So it sharpened itself.
Against skin.
Against mirrors.
Against the unbearable vacancy
where safety was supposed to be.
It found a hundred little ways
to make the body carry
what the mouth could not confess.
And yet the body—
treacherous, magnificent body—
kept going.
After childhood was violated.
After innocence was made obscene.
After other children
turned difference into a weapon.
After years of being told,
in a thousand little ways,
that the way the mind moved
through the world was wrong.
After becoming so young
that death seemed almost
like an older sibling—
something waiting patiently
at the edge of the bed.
Still—
breath.
Still—
morning.
Still—
the ridiculous, stubborn pulse
of another day.
And then the breaking.
Not metaphorical.
Not elegant.
Porcelain against porcelain.
A self fractured
by every hand it had learned
to fear,
by every feeling it had been forced
to swallow whole.
For a while,
there was only the floor.
Then the pieces were gathered.
Not by a saviour.
Not by a miracle.
By the same hands
that had once trembled.
Piece by piece.
Memory by memory.
Bloodless where possible.
Bloody where necessary.
The cracks were not concealed.
They were filled with gold.
Because there is something obscene
about pretending the fracture
never happened.
Something almost cruel
about polishing a survivor
until they resemble
the person they might have been
without the damage.
No.
Let the seams remain.
Let them glitter.
Let the body say:
Here.
Here.
Here.
This is where I broke.
This is where I almost disappeared.
This is where the lamb
learned to bite.
This is where the blood
became a colour
instead of a sentence.
And this—
this is where
the pieces were lifted
from the floor,
not restored,
but remade.
The lamb is still there.
God, it is still there.
Soft beneath the scars.
Still frightened.
Still hungry for tenderness.
Still capable of mistaking hunger
for love.
But now, when it bares its teeth,
it does not always mean
to destroy itself.
Sometimes,
it is only learning
how to guard
what survived.