No

I didn’t say NO,

My body screamed the words,

Every year since,

In the moment, I lost the word NO.

I stayed where NO wasn’t heard,

Silent crime,

A map I was never given,

To a safety that was never mine.

The absence of NO, made room for the anger,

To boundaries that were crossed,

Decades of rage,

To needs left abandoned, ignored, and lost.

NO is a full sentence.

Years of denial, no words for this pain,

But in trauma, silence feels louder,

Just a quietly growing cancer of shame,

Healing may not bring me answers,

I’ll never know why my NO didn’t belong.

Why wasn’t my word proof?

Real love is being seen, and I was hiding for too long.