Lyra Nox | + Follow Poet |
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Survivor

They call me survivor,
like it’s a badge I should polish,
a word stitched neatly across my chest
so no one sees the scars underneath.

But survival isn’t pretty.
It’s teeth clenched in the dark,
nails dug into my own skin just to feel where my body ends.
It’s breathing through the memories that come back like broken glass,
uninvited,
cutting anyway.

Survival is swallowing silence because the world prefers my quiet,
because truth makes people uncomfortable,
because they want stories with clean endings and I am all jagged edges.

I was told it was my fault.
I was told to forgive.
I was told to move on, as if trauma is a suitcase
I can just set down at the airport and walk away free-handed.

But here’s the truth:
I carry it.
Every day.
It lives in my bones,
in the startle when someone touches me too quickly,
in the way my voice sometimes disappears when I need it most.

And still
I am here.
Not just breathing,
but speaking.
Not just surviving,
but naming the fire that tried to consume me.

Yes, I am a survivor, but I am more than that word.
I am rebuilding.
I am reimagining.
I am the architect of a self no one will ever steal again.

And if my voice shakes,
it shakes with the weight of a thousand silenced throats that never got to tell their story.

This is mine.
Raw. Unfinished. Alive.
I am survivor,
but I am also storm,
I am also sunrise,
I am everything they could not break.

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