The Hands That Took Me

Night folds tight on the room I feared,

Walls hum low with the breath I steered;

A shadow leans where the doorway bends,

Holding truths no daylight mends.

I trace the echoes on my skin,

Fragile maps of where I’d been,

And every tremor I couldn’t flee

Still shakes the ground inside of me.

If I vanish where the dark held sway,

Carry my hope through the fractured day;

I was more than the silence kept,

More than the tears the night intercepts.

Let the wind rewrite my plea—

A spark those hands could never see;

I rise from the ache they left in me,

From the hands that took me.

Footsteps bloom in the hollow air,

Each one sharp as a whispered stare;

I learned to breathe in a narrow frame,

Hiding warmth from the weight of blame.

But memory stirs like a restless tide,

Pulling strength I thought had died,

And every flicker of distant light

Restores the voice I lost that night.

If I wander through the shadows’ bind,

Let the dawn recall I was mine;

Through the hush that shaped my fear,

I held a glow that stayed sincere.

Hear my pulse reclaim its sound—

A vow the dark could not decree;

I speak from the quiet scars beneath

The hands that took me.

I learned that pain can bloom to flame,

Carving truth from the weight of shame;

The past can’t cage what my heart regrew,

Nor mute the courage I fought through.

Somewhere the sky returns my breath—

In the light I fought to see.

If the world calls out my hidden spark,

I’ll answer through the unraveling dark;

I’m more than the hush they tried to claim,

More than the echo of that unnamed pain.

Every tremor in the waking air

Writes strength in who I came to be—

I rise, alive, unbroken from

The hands that took me.