She was born between slammed doors and shattered vows,
a child no one fought for.
Her name was scribbled in ink
on court papers and custody exchanges --
not whispered in lullabies,
not sung to sleep.

Her mother vanished behind bitterness,
her father dissolved into silence.
No one stayed.
No one came back.

She became someone else’s responsibility,
folded into the quiet corners
of her grandparents’ rigid home.
They kept her clothed, kept her fed,
but love …
love was an echo she could never reach.

She learned to disappear without dying --
a ghost with warm skin,
drifting through classrooms, holidays,
birthdays no one remembered.

At sixteen, she confused need for love
and shackled herself to a boy
who only wanted to feel powerful.
She bled into motherhood
before she learned her own name.
Her youth slipped into cribs and quiet sobs.
No one asked if she was okay.

So she ran.
Into fire.
Into chaos.
Into strangers’ arms and bottles and moments
that pretended to care.
She sought warmth like a starving dog,
chasing sparks that burned her fingers clean off.

Every reflection was someone else --
someone she hated,
someone she blamed,
someone she pitied.

They called her damaged.
They called her lost.
No one asked why.
No one stayed long enough
to teach her how to stay for herself.

But --
One night,
years later,
with mascara dried like ink trails
and silence humming in her throat,
she stood in a bathroom mirror
and did not look away.

For the first time,
she didn’t flinch.
She didn’t lie.
She saw the girl --
abandoned, bruised,
bone-tired from surviving herself.
But still breathing.
Still here.

The world hadn’t wanted her.
But it hadn’t killed her either.
And buried beneath every rejection,
every bruise disguised as a lesson,
was a flicker --
small and trembling,
but hers.
The light she spent a lifetime chasing
was never in their hands.
It lived in her ribs,
waiting.
Burning low, but burning true.

She was the match.
She always was.
But no one taught her
how to strike.

© Dark Water Diaries