Remember Me

Remember Me
You looked at me like I was something to be folded, made smaller, pressed into the corners where my voice couldn't reach.
You counted every mistake like they were proof, stacked them high enough to build a prison and called it love, called it discipline, called it "for your own good."

I called it surviving.

Remember me.
Remember the child who measured footsteps before entering a room, who learned that silence could be safer than speaking, who carried the weight of someone else's storms on shoulders that were still growing.

Remember me.
You said I was too much. Too loud. Too sensitive. Too weak. Too broken. Too impossible to love.
So I became an expert at disappearing, at apologising for taking up space, at shrinking until I almost believed I was as small as you needed me to be.

Remember me.
Remember the nights I stitched myself together with borrowed hope, the mornings I smiled with a heart full of cracks, the days I walked into the world pretending bruises don't always live on skin.

Remember me.
Because here's the part you never saw.
Every word you threw became another stone, and I built something with them.
A spine.

Every door you slammed taught me how to open my own.
Every time you tried to convince me I was worthless,
I found another reason to keep breathing.

Remember me.
Not as the frightened shadow standing in your doorway.
Not as the quiet voice waiting for permission.

Remember me as the wildfire you mistook for ash.
Remember me when I laugh too loudly to hear your echo.
Remember me when I stand tall enough to cast my own shadow.
Remember me when kindness lives where fear once slept.
Remember me because I remembered myself.
And that, more than anything, is the ending you never thought I'd write.

So if my name ever crosses your mind, don't remember the child you thought you could break.
Remember the person who survived you, grew anyway, and learned that being small was never who I was.

Remember me.

Remember me.

Remember me.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2026

Poem

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June 25, 2026 at 10:29 AM
I am so sorry for what you had to go through Jade and no child should suffer this way... As a spoken word poet, I can hear you reading this one with a lot of emotion... Its a vulnerable poem and they say poetry is a catharsis and you have bled her... I loved so many lines here, especially the one about wildfire and ash, that is genius as is the opening stanza, where you have been oppressed... Loved the fighting spirit and how you overcame this abuse.. Congratulations on your placement
McGlynn  Avatar
June 25, 2026 at 10:31 AM
Thank you so much ??
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