Hatefed
Hate is a sharp inheritance.
I did not ask for it.
It grew in me like a second skeleton—
not born, but built
in the blue-lit silence after fists,
in the wreckage of rooms where my name was a curse
and my voice was a threat to authority.
My family—
a word that still makes my mouth taste like pennies—
taught me that love was conditional,
a ledger of wounds and withholding.
They told me I was nothing,
and I believed them,
until I learned that hatred could speak louder than grief.
I wore it like a crown.
No, like barbed wire—wrapped tight,
a defence that cut me while keeping others out.
I hated them so much I began to look like them.
And then I hated myself.
I set my life on fire to stay warm.
Ashes don’t judge,
and pills don’t ask where you’ve been.
Cocaine doesn’t care who you are.
It just opens its arms
and lets you forget.
I disappeared into alleys,
slept in the spaces between streetlights,
made deals with men who had eyes like broken windows
and promises stitched with rot.
I stole. I lied. I bled on floors that had no memory of me.
I called this freedom.
But it was just exile with better lighting.
I was dying—slowly, quietly,
like a candle in a room with no air—
and no one noticed.
Except the hate.
It always noticed.
It whispered, “Good.”
It wasn’t redemption that saved me.
It wasn’t a miracle.
It was exhaustion.
One day, I just got tired of being hollow.
Tired of the rage swallowing my name,
tired of the story they wrote for me
playing on repeat inside my skull.
Forgiveness didn’t come like light.
It came like water—slow, seeping through
the cracks I didn’t know were still open.
I didn’t forgive them to free them.
I forgave them so they’d stop living inside me
rent-free,
destroying the furniture of my becoming.
I started over—stone by stone,
reminding my body it was not a crime scene.
Telling my reflection:
You are not what they did to you.
You are not the bruises,
the rage,
the ache that made you use.
You are not the hate that almost won.
And now, I speak with a voice that carries weight,
not weapons.
I build with hands once taught to break.
I am living proof
that even scorched earth
can choose to bloom.
Copyright © Aaliyah O'Neil | Year Posted 2025
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