Reena Marie

I've become a footnote
in the margins of your attention,
my words hover like dust
between us—unwelcome, uncertain.
...

I am a collection of maybes,
a breathing question mark,
wondering if my edges
are too sharp or too soft
...

In just a handful of sunsets and dawns,
Your mask began its inevitable slip.
What first appeared as kindness spawns
Reveals itself with each careless lip.
...

For ten years, I swallowed his words whole—
bitter pills that dissolved into my bloodstream,
became the voice that woke me each morning,
whispering I was nothing, would be nothing.
...

I am learning how to heal
but no one told me
it would feel like walking
through a house with no lights,
...

In shadows where his words took root,
'You'll amount to nothing, ' he would say,
Prophecies of failure, absolute,
While mother turned her gaze away.
...

Your silence speaks volumes, a language of pain,
Of winters survived, of weathered refrain,
I stand at the threshold of your guarded heart,
Knowing healing begins with the gentlest start.
...

You are the language my heart speaks
before words have formed,
the silence between heartbeats
where everything meaningful lives.
...

Bent but not broken,
you rise like a sunflower
after the storm has passed—
roots deeper than the wind's memory,
...