A Childhood Made of Echoes

"You don't belong"
were words no one ever spoke,
yet the truth of them
pressed against my small ribs
like a bruise that never healed.

It lived in my bones
that quiet, cold knowing
that I was alone.

In classrooms,
in crowded parks,
in rooms lit with laughter,
I moved like a shadow
present,
but never held.

I watched other children run
into the sunlight of their own simplicity
while I sat in the sandbox,
hands buried in the warm grain,
trying to think of something to say
that wouldn't frighten them.

Because no one else saw
the things I could.
No one else felt
the shift in the air
when the unseen entered the room.

Their world was made of surface.
Mine was made of whispers.

"You don't belong"
didn't need to be said.
I felt it
in every inch of distance
between myself and the world
I was expected to inhabit.

They told me
what I saw wasn't real
as if their eyes
were the only ones
God remembered to give.

So I learned to quiet myself,
to hold visions behind my teeth,
to let the echoes be my company
when people could not.

Loneliness became familiar
a soft, relentless companion.
Not cruel,
just honest.

I did not belong
to the world of simple truths.
I belonged to the rooms
where silence spoke back,
to the shadows
that kept me company,
to the echoes that answered
when no one else did.