She Carried What No One Held

Some souls are not born into arms —

they are born into silence.

Into houses that echo more than they speak,

into rooms where childhood is something

you must build, not live.

She was one of them.

Before she learned to write her name,

she had already signed a contract with survival.

While others reached for hands,

she reached for herself.

An older sister — not by choice,

but by fate's cruel arithmetic.

She held her world together

with hands that still trembled.

Trust, to her, was not a bridge —

it was a tightrope over a ravine,

built plank by plank from disbelief.

Even family were shadows

she could not lean on.

And yet she stood — always alone,

never truly lost.

The world, however, is not gentle

to those who walk unguarded.

Men — strangers and blood alike —

brushed against her like thieves,

touching what was not theirs,

claiming space that was never offered.

Each touch left no wound on skin,

but carved into the quiet corners of her mind.

A lesson whispered without language:

"Even safety can betray you."

And yet, she loved.

A distant boy, a fragile trust,

a heart that opened like a sunrise.

She gave what she barely had —

trust, devotion, the currency of a soul

that had taught itself to believe.

But betrayal came not with thunder,

but with the quiet certainty

of someone choosing elsewhere.

Even love, it seemed, could fracture.

But here is the paradox:

She remains.

In a world that has tried

to write her story for her —

with hands, with lies, with abandonment —

she rewrites herself daily.

Not as victim, nor as heroine,

but as witness:

to her own becoming.

Strength, for her, is not loud.

It is the soft refusal to disappear.

It is standing still when life

has every reason to see her fall.

It is looking at pain,

not as chains,

but as proof she has lived

and kept living.

She is the girl who became her own shelter.

Not because the world offered none,

but because her soul learned

to be both the storm and the refuge.