Abby Deater Poet Free verse

The House He Threw At ME

I once told you
I was strong.

That when life
threw a brick at me,
I'd build a house with it
by morning.

Give me a wall,
I'd find a door.

Give me a door,
I'd build a home.

Give me a reason
to believe I couldn't,
and I'd spend my life
proving you wrong.

I grew up hearing
a girl can't.

Can't lift that.
Can't build that.
Can't do that.
Can't stand beside a man
and call herself his equal.

So I became fluent
in proving them wrong.

I learned how to carry
what they said was too heavy.

I learned how to build
with hands they said
weren't strong enough.

I made an empire
out of every
you can't.

And then there was you.

And somehow,
one boy
because you don't deserve
the title of a man
made me feel smaller
than every doubt
I'd spent my life defeating.

Isn't that ironic?

I spent my whole life
proving that I could do
anything a man could.

I carried what they said
was too heavy.

Built what they said
was beyond me.

Turned every you can't
into another reason
to prove them wrong.

And then I met you.

A boy who couldn't even
be honest with me
somehow convinced me
that I wasn't strong enough
to carry myself.

You didn't throw a brick at me.

You threw the whole house.

And for the first time,
I didn't know what to build.

I remember saying,
in a voice I didn't know I had,

"Congratulations. You broke me.”

And God,
I hated how true it felt.

Because I had spent my entire life
believing there was nothing
I couldn't survive.

And yet somehow,
I let your betrayal
make me question
everything I knew about myself.

I let your hands
make me forget
what these hands had built.

I let one boy
make me feel like a girl
who needed saving,

when I had spent my whole life
saving myself.

But here's what you forgot:

You didn't build me.

You didn't teach me how to be strong.

You weren't there
for every brick I carried,
every wall I climbed,
every person who told me
I couldn't.

You only met me
after I'd already built myself.

So maybe you did break me.

Maybe for a moment,
you really did.

But broken things
aren't always destroyed.

Sometimes they're rebuilt.

And I think I'm finally
picking up the pieces.

Not to rebuild the house
you destroyed.

But to build something
you could never touch.

An empire.

One built by the girl
you tried to make feel small.

The girl who remembers now

I was strong before you.

I was capable before you.

I was enough before you.

And I will be
long after you.

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