They carved my name into whispers,
scandals dressed as stories,
forgetting I was more than a headline,
more than a cautionary tale.
I loved where love was a labyrinth—
mirrors that fractured my reflection,
rooms where tenderness was rationed,
and silence pressed harder than fists.
There were nights I thought
the sky had closed its doors to me.
Nights when my own breath
felt borrowed,
when I stood so close to absence
I could taste its sweetness.
Yet I remained.
Not in defiance,
but in devotion—
to a daughter’s laughter,
to music that still rose unbidden,
to stories still left untold,
to the quiet dignity of creation.
I do not speak now to bear witness against.
I speak so that others may not drown
in the same dark waters.
So that love may no longer be
a theatre of cruelty,
but a garden where both can flourish.
My story is not the wound;
it is the suture.
It is proof that even from the brink,
a woman may rise whole again,
her voice steady,
her hope unbroken,
her tomorrow intact.