Kaleigh Jae Poet Free verse

What Happens When You Tell the Truth pt 1 of 3

They tell us to speak up: 
To report. 
To be brave. 
To come forward. 

They tell us
Truth has power.
That if we speak
someone will listen.
When I spoke, nothing happened.
No concern.
No protection.
No care.
It was disbelief. 
It was discomfort. 

It was a power with a tightly wound smile and a fixed viewpoint. 

I told her he touched me, violated me, 
Turned my body to a battlefield in which I was both sides warring. 
I told her I was scared. 
That I needed help. 
She glared at me and stated 
I was harassing him. 
I needed to leave him alone. 
I was scaring him. 

And just like that, his hands were clean, 
And their disdain became his protection. 
Their indifference became my pain. 
My friends were present, 
Their eyes met mine. 
They watched it unfold. 
They still stood with him afterward, 
They still laughed with him, 
They still made space for him at the table while I sat trembling, 
trying not to disappear again.


My mom had only known a fraction. 
She knew something terrible had happened that day.
But she didn’t know the whole truth. 
I told her a version I thought she could handle, because the real story, 
The full, brutal truth of her daughter losing control of her body would have destroyed her, 
I wanted to hide the truth. 
I wanted to protect her from the truth. 
Now the truth is all I want. 
But back then
the truth felt too heavy
to hand to someone I loved.
I had to carry it myself.
I carried the memory
of hands that were never supposed to touch me.
I carried the sound of my own voice
breaking in that office
while someone in power
looked at me
like I was the problem.
I carried the moment
my friends watched
and said nothing.
And I told my mom
just enough
to explain the tears
Because how do you tell your mother,
that the people she trusted
to keep her daughter safe
Didn't?
How do you tell her
that someone turned your body
into a place you no longer recognize?
I couldn’t
I swallowed the rest of the story
and tried to live with it alone.
I tried to move forward
like nothing happened.
Like I was still fully present.
But my mind kept drifting
outside my body.
That wasn’t weakness.
It was survival.
Psychologists call it dissociation—
a trauma response
when the brain tries to protect itself
from something it cannot safely process.
My brain protected me
when no one else did.
Still, some nights
I drift back.
Back to the office.
Back to the moment
the truth, was weighed
and quickly dismissed.
Back to where my tears
meant nothing.
(see pt two)

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