BONE DEEP”

BONE DEEP” I don’t forgive. I calcify. I turned every scream into something dry. I turned every bruise into bone and wire, every soft thing into live electric fire. You don’t get to call it growth. You don’t get to call it fate. You don’t get to say “it made you strong” like strength was worth the rate. You built a cage and called it care. You built a church and hid it there. You built obedience into my skin and now you flinch when I don’t give in. I remember tone more than words. I remember doors more than threats. I remember how the air would change before you ever got upset. I remember shrinking. I remember bracing. I remember smiling while erasing. I remember learning how to freeze so you could do what you pleased. Don’t say it wasn’t that bad. Don’t say I misunderstood. Children don’t invent dread in houses that are good. You taught me silence like survival. You taught me shame like a hymn. You taught me love was conditional, so I starved myself to fit within. Now you don’t like what I became. Now I’m “too much,” now I’m “mean.” Now my boundaries feel like violence because you preferred me unseen. You don’t get the softer version. You don’t get the healed display. You don’t get the polished closure to wash your guilt away. I carried it. Every inch. In muscle memory and jaw-clenched flinch. In hypervigilant scanning eyes. In dissociative goodbyes. I was a child. You were the storm. I was adapting. You called it “wrong.” And I’m angry. Not poetic angry. Not Instagram caption angry. Bone-deep, cellular, marrow angry. The kind that hums under the skin like something that never cooled. I resent the nights. I resent the prayers. I resent the way you made me swear to be better, quieter, holier, small— while you stood tall. I resent the version of me that thought it was love. I resent the version of me that called it enough. You fractured me early. You called it discipline. You made obedience holy and labeled resistance sin. Now I don’t bow. Now I don’t fold. Now I don’t trade my silence for being told I’m dramatic. Unstable. Hard to love. If love requires erasure, then I’d rather be unloved. You don’t get to rewrite this. You don’t get to say “we tried.” You don’t get to claim confusion while I was learning how to divide. Every part of me that split did it to survive you. Every wall you complain about is one you taught me to build. And the worst part? I’m still carrying it. Still unlearning it. Still waking up with the ghost of it in my throat like gravel. You don’t see the cost. You never did. You saw compliance. You never saw the kid. So keep your apologies. Keep your distance too. I don’t need redemption from the people who broke the glue. I am not your redemption arc. I am not your lesson learned. I am the aftermath walking, and I’m done pretending it doesn’t burn. I don’t forgive. I remember. I don’t forget. I harden. And if that makes me dangerous, good. Because I was only ever dangerous once I stopped being yours.