ARCHITECTURE
- Mar 21
- 1 min read
By Nadia Beckett
The door was locked,
but it wasn’t enough
He broke in like a demolition crew
Leaving only dust where foundation used to be.
My skin still recognises a wrong touch.
An imprint
Cellular panic
Screaming a silent name.
I search for the woman who lived here
She’s gone
Hiding behind my eyes
Whispering; You didn't fight hard enough.
Violation isn't a scar,
but a shadow glued to my heels
It taught me the feeling of unclean
How ownership can be revoked in a single
wrenching act.
I wash and wash, trying to scrub the memory off my bones
But it lives in the air now.
A permanent crack in my floor
Every step I take
Careful and measured
Because the world is brittle
And I know exactly how easily it shatters.
I am an echo in my own house
A stolen geography
The place where ‘no’ dissolved
into a soundless, thick dark.
It was erasure
A violent edit in my skin's timeline
Leaving behind not a wound,
but a hollow.
The mirror lies
This reflection staring back is a fragile casing
Clutching a secret too heavy to hold.
Trust is a language long forgotten
Safety a myth written in chalk
washed away.
The past isn't over,
it is strapped to my spine
A long, exhausting war to reclaim the terrified kingdom of self
Unmade
Now desperately trying to rebuild,
around a core that understands,
Nothing is ever truly solid.