The Bird and the Ark

They said it wasn’t my fault.

But their eyes didn’t match their mouths.

They moved fast,

but not toward me.

They whispered care,

but their hands were busy

building shelter

for him.

They said:

You’re brave.

You’re strong.

You’re helping us heal.

But all I felt was

disappearing.

I told the truth

and watched them

treat it

like a problem to solve,

not a wound to tend.

They handed me

the script they’d written:

Say it was complicated.

Say you forgive.

Say you’re okay now.

But I wasn’t okay.

And it wasn’t complicated.

It was calculated.

And he had agency

every step of the way.

When someone finally came

who asked him to answer,

he vanished.

Avoided.

Played fragile.

And they still

shielded him

with their bodies

and their prayers

and their paperwork.

Because he was still

one of them.

And I

was already the storm

they’d learned to outlast.

They used my child-mind

as soft terrain—

planted their narrative

where my memory should have grown.

They shaped me

to say what they could live with.

And when I didn’t,

they said I had ruined everything.

They told me I had power.

But what they meant was:

We can’t hold this,

so you will.

They made me the one

who burned down the house—

because I spoke

the fire

they refused to name.

They centered me

only long enough

to call me dangerous.

And when I wouldn’t lie

or bow

or wrap it in softness,

they gave me

distance.

Silence.

The long exile

disguised as peace.

They sent me from the ark

like a bird

they didn’t plan to call back.

No branch.

No landing.

Just sky.

Just the echo of their comfort

turning to ash in my mouth.

And when I flew,

they called it flight.

Not the escape it was.

I was not healed.

I was cut loose.

They thought

my story would be their story.

They thought

they could house my survival

inside a myth

where they were the heroes.

But I didn’t survive

the way they wanted.

I survived honestly.

And that made me dangerous.

Because I remembered.

Because I named it.

Because I didn’t make it easy.

And now—

I am not returning

to any ark

that made me

the offering.

I am not a dove.

I am the sky

that won’t close around their lie.