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Freya Maslin Poem
Am I invisible?
No, I’m not.
Sometimes I feel like I am.
Sometimes I wish I was.
But deep down I know I’m not.
Even if it was my deepest desire,
I’m certain it’d ever come true.
In this house,
I may not be invisible,
But my feelings definitely are.
Like they’re hovering,
far away from my body.
Where my family can’t see.
I soak in the words they preach,
When I become the outlet for sadness, anger, and grief.
My body moves mindlessly as
I comfort them.
Each and every person.
Even though it is never returned.
My brain taps restlessly at my skull,
Begging me to listen,
Begging me to acknowledge the twinge in my chest,
the tears building up in my eyes.
But I can’t.
I cant.
I lay alone in this bed,
Staring into the darkness,
Wondering why noone cares.
Shouldn’t I get some compensation?
Don’t I deserve something back?
Aren’t my kind words,
My selfless actions,
Deserving of something,
More?
I’m told to “keep it together.”
But why me?
Because I am stronger than them?
more mature?
more understanding?
And yet I am so young.
Can my heart keep beating,
With this many wounds?
My rib cage is torn open,
blood leaks from my chest,
dark crimson stains the world
around me,
and yet I still ask,
“Are you okay?”
Even if it is my life,
I will offer it to them,
For it bears no importance to me.
Surrounded by these people,
The ones I call ‘family’,
I am a counsellor, for all ages.
I wonder where I store it all,
All the trauma -
That’s been passed down to me,
Like a secret ingredient,
Measured by the gods.
A treasure to keep safe.
And I lock it all away.
Will I ever escape this?
Am I always to be seen as just another diary to dump words in?
Someone who will drink up the sorrow,
From her very household,
Just to prevent a flood?
When will this torture end?
I know I love them,
There is no denying that statement.
But I no longer wish to walk around with the label “therapist” stamped on my back.
Don’t you see the scales above my head?
Dangerously tilting,
About to fall?
I feel like sometime soon,
The bolts will loosen,
And all will fall apart.
I am breaking into pieces,
cracks appearing with each trauma untold.
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t here,
I wish when they saw me,
I was seen for conversation - normal ones.
And sometimes I wish I was invisible,
Or maybe not even here at all.
Copyright © Freya Maslin | Year Posted 2025
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Details |
Freya Maslin Poem
Dust
To them, my problems are dust,
light enough to disappear
with a single breath.
But dust always settles elsewhere.
I learned early
what unwanted felt like.
I learned which floorboards to
step on,
how to avoid the eggshells,
which scale tipped in their favour.
I learned how to be careful -
not to add weight
to a room already collapsing.
I learned I would never be
the most important thing in it.
There was always something louder than me
Anger that battled addiction
A world that needed constant translation
Energy that filled every space
A house that had room for everyone — but me.
At some point it became second nature.
I don’t really remember when the autopilot began.
I’m not sure if it ever ended.
I learned how to function without healing.
I learned to
just
keep
going.
My body noticed, though.
Pain learned my schedule before I did.
It spoke in aches, in fatigue I couldn’t reason with.
The dust began to settle again,
before they blew it all away.
When I became a teenager,
I learned that help had an expiration date.
That my body was something to manage,
rather than live in.
The weight on my shoulders was bruising.
It became too much to live with.
They decided an hour a week would stitch me back together.
They assumed silence was recovery,
And I wilted, just that little bit
more.
When no one checks in afterward,
you learn how quiet loss can be.
How subtle pain can breathe.
Something I loved disappeared,
and the world went on unchanged.
I drowned in grief,
and no one thought to ask.
I became background noise,
a shadow the room overlooked.
I was present, but unseen.
In this house, I am transparent.
see-through.
No glance spared for me.
Another piece was taken from me.
He took what wasn’t his.
A night that fractured time.
A body that stopped feeling neutral.
Clothes I can’t wear.
Places I can’t go.
Silence thick enough
to suffocate.
To them, my pain is like a dandelion:
blow lightly, and it disappears.
but the seeds drift elsewhere,
and the problems still stay.
specks of white, lost in tall grass.
I am still here,
unseen, unheard,
a shadow they pass by.
The house carries on around me.
They pass through me,
like I don’t exist at all.
I learned that my pain is easy to dismiss,
easy to blow away,
but it never leaves.
It drifts into empty rooms,
folds into the corners of conversations I’m not part of,
gathers in the spaces where my voice goes unheard.
Dust that just gets brushed away.
Dust that no one bothers to notice.
Dust that isn’t important.
Copyright © Freya Maslin | Year Posted 2025
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