Peter Atherton Poet Free verse

My Story

I didn’t realise how early it started —
the slow unravelling,
the way life kept taking pieces of me
I wasn’t old enough to name.
I learned to carry it quietly,
to pretend the weight was muscle
and not the ache of being overlooked.

And the years kept moving,
and I kept shrinking to fit them,
teaching myself to stay small
so no one would notice the cracks.
I became fluent in holding it together,
in swallowing the words
that might have saved me
if I’d ever dared to speak them.

There were nights I lay awake
feeling my own heartbeat
like a stranger in the room,
wondering how something
so tired
could keep going anyway.
And mornings where I rose
not out of hope,
but out of habit —
because stopping felt louder
than surviving ever did.

This is my story —
the one I never meant to tell,
the one written in the quiet places
where no one thought to look.
And if you feel something shift
inside you as you read this,
if a familiar ache stirs,
then maybe you know the truth too:
some of us learned to live
by pretending we weren’t hurting.
Some of us are only now learning
that we deserved better
than silence.

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