A Bride Too Soon

I was still learning the weight of my own name

When they wrapped me in silk and called me someone’s wife.

My hands were small.

They knew chalk, not gold.

They knew how to hold stories, not promises I did not make.

They said I looked beautiful.

I wondered if beauty always feels this heavy.  

The house I entered had walls that listened.

They heard my silence more than my words.

I folded myself into corners,

like a page turned too soon.

At night, I counted the years I had not lived.

They lay beside me, restless, unfinished.

Childhood knocked softly at the door, 

But no one let it in.

I learned quickly.

How to lower my voice.

How to carry expectations like water in a cracked bowl.

How to smile without asking why.

But inside, something stayed unbroken.

A small, stubborn light.

It whispered of classrooms,

of running without reason,

of laughter that did not need permission.

They gave me a new name.

But I still answer to the girl I was

When no one is watching.

And sometimes, in the quiet between breaths,

I meet her again.

She does not ask me to explain.

She only holds my hand

Like we are both trying to remember

How to grow.