The Prismatic Self
I write because silence was a tyrant
with a velvet muzzle.
Because childhood was a soundproof cage,
and I was taught to swallow every scream
like communion.
“Poetry is not therapy,”
the judge says—
but he has never been buried alive
under the weight of unsaid things.
This is not a poem.
It is an autopsy
where I hold the scalpel
and the mirror.
Anadiplosis: I write because I wasn’t heard.
Wasn’t heard because I was too broken to speak.
Too broken to speak, so I taught my wounds
to whisper in metre.
Litotes: It’s not that I never had a voice—
it’s that I had no listeners.
Each stanza is a splinter pried from the bones
of a girl forgotten by the system,
a girl mistaken for a file number,
a dosage,
a relapse,
a risk.
I am made of metaphors because truth
was never safe naked.
I stage my pain
on the theatre of the page—
not to perform,
but to practise resurrection.
My life has been a series of auditions
before indifferent gods:
Family court.
Rehab.
Recovery.
Rejection letters.
I walk into each contest
like a gladiator into a coliseum
of clipped tongues and sharpened pens.
Not to win—
but to remind the world
I survived the audition
for my own existence.
Conceit: My soul is a prism—
fractured,
but scattering light
in more directions
than a whole thing ever could.
I invented a word for what I am:
Echolucence—
the condition of glowing only when echoed,
of finding light in the return of your own voice.
So ask me again: Why do I write?
Because I am still learning to believe
that I am not noise.
That my voice
is a weapon,
a balm,
a bell rung in defiance
of the silence that built me.
And maybe this poem isn’t for you.
Maybe it’s for the girl I used to be—
the one who carved poems into her ribs
just to feel something
resonant.
Echolucence (n.)
1. The condition of glowing only when echoed.
2. A rare and radiant state in which one shines solely in response to resonance—be it sound, memory, or emotion.
3. The quiet art of illumination triggered not from within, but from the return of one’s own voice.
Usage:
She did not shine in solitude, but when her words came back to her through another’s lips, she shimmered with echolucence.
Etymology: From echo (a repeated sound) + lucence (the quality of emitting light). Coined on a drizzly afternoon by someone who realised they only truly glow when heard.
Synonyms: Reflectionglow, Reverberlight, Murmurshine
Antonyms: Self-illuminary, Solaglow
Note: May flicker in silence. Best nurtured in resonant company.
Copyright © Aaliyah O'Neil | Year Posted 2025
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