I was not born in a garden.
I was born in a desert—
where words were not petals
but small stones thrown in passing.
People there did not know
that language could wound.
They spoke the way dry winds move,
sharp, ordinary, unthinking.
It was never just me
they meant to hurt.
It was simply
how they lived.
But my heart was not made
for sandstorms.
Even as a child
I could hear danger in the air,
like a bird that senses
the tremor before the earth cracks.
I watched every word,
measured every silence,
counted the ways harm
might reach me.
No gardener came
to tend the fragile plant
that had somehow grown
in the wrong soil.
They left me to the weather.
If she grows, she grows.
If she withers, she withers.
At twelve
I made my first quiet calculation:
Six more years,
I told myself.
Six years until marriage—
six years until escape.
The desert teaches children
strange mathematics.
But when the horizon came closer
I discovered another drought:
those meant to guide me
did not know the road.
So I walked through fire myself—
a small girl
carrying negotiations in her trembling hands,
trying to convince strangers
that I was worthy of a home.
For a moment
the flames parted.
A family listened.
A man almost chose me.
But new walls rose overnight:
he must be richer,
higher, brighter than the sun itself.
And the gates closed again.
Years fell like dry leaves.
I kept trying,
kept presenting my wounded heart
like a fragile offering.
Sometimes people admired it.
Sometimes they crushed it.
Each betrayal
took a small light from my chest
until the lantern inside me
burned low.
Then one day
I found someone else
standing at the edge of the same desert.
He too
had been left behind by the world.
I loved him quietly—
not because I needed a wedding,
but because I needed proof
that somewhere
two abandoned souls
could still make a small shelter
out of kindness.
Seeing him rise,
seeing him breathe again—
that became my horizon.
But time,
that old thief,
had already taken too much.
Now when my bones are tired,
when the storms have worn me thin,
the same voices that once watched me suffer
suddenly speak of marriage
as though it were a game.
They speak lightly
of a life
I spent years bleeding to protect.
They do not see
the ruins already inside me.
They do not hear
the fire still roaring in my blood.
I have crossed too many deserts
to begin another journey now.
So if the world insists
on its ceremonies and expectations,
let it walk without me.
I have carried enough.
Leave me
to the quiet
I fought my whole life
to find.
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