How do I love myself
when everyone else
taught me to withhold it?
Layered Histories
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
The house remembers
What no one else did.
The sharpness of screams
caught in the drywall,
the broomstickâs shadow
stretching too long
across the kitchen tile.
Glass breaking,
again and again,
until silence learned
to brace itself.
inhale
The closet lock clicked shut.
hold
The darkness welcomed me like routine.
exhale
Stillness was my only shield.
Words thrown harder
than hands.
Worthless.
Useless.
Piece of…
(I refuse to repeat them.
I refuse to belong to them.)
I became so small
I forgot I was still breathing.
I folded myself
behind chairs,
beneath beds,
inside my own skin.
inhale
Is this love?
hold
Why does love feel like danger?
exhale
Why does kindness now
make me flinch?
They taught me
I was unlovable.
That my body was wrong,
my voice too loud,
my being too much.
So tell me:
How do I love myself
when everyone else
taught me to withhold it?
Still,
I remember
because my body does.
Beyond revenge,
returning
to the girl who survived
and wind in her lungs.
She breathed
through fear.
She whispered
through fists.
She lived
when no one wanted her to.
She is still here.
And maybe,
just maybe,
She is worthy
of the love
They never gave.
Return to the Girl Who Survived
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026