Growing Around Wounds

I grew up learning how to survive, not how to live. My childhood was a map of bruises,

some skin, most on memory. I carried silence like a secret badge, pretending it didn't

shape me. (Pause) But the truth is....we don't outgrow our wounds, we grow around them.

Now I'm an adult with walls for ribs and trust stitiched together with fear, trying to heal a

child who still cries in a place nobody ever looked into.