When you spotted me, your face slammed shut.
Judgment flashed from your eyes—quick as breath, but I caught it.
Then you sped up.
Were you afraid I might reach for you?
When you laid eyes on me, who did you see?
A woman hunched against brick, wrapped in layers?
Look again.
I see a survivor.
A woman who raised herself from wreckage and kept walking.
My scars tell stories of nights survived, of battles fought with nothing but breath.
Do you think I chose this life?
I once had a bed, a couch, and a kitchen table.
Hope sat beside me in the morning as I sipped coffee. Birds sang through open windows.
These hands held dreams.
They braided hair, pressed Band-Aids on scraped knees, cradled babies close.
Then the ground cracked open—
A cough turned into something deeper
and swallowed everything but me.
Do you laugh at my bags, my layers?
They keep me warm when the nights bite, when my bones hum with cold.
You don’t know strength until pavement becomes your mattress.
Until you walk all day with your world strapped to your back.
Until you’ve scrubbed your underwear, jeans and your coat
in the blue basin at a gas station sink.
Hunger? I know it.
Shame? I’ve buried it.
Pity? Keep it.
Your judgment doesn’t define me.
It’s just another battle I fight.
At night, I sing to the stars.
They remember.
They watched me kneel beside a crib,
watched the light in my kitchen flicker out.
They don’t flinch at my layers or my grief,
or ask where I sleep.
They just burn.
And sometimes they whisper—
truths that might crack your quiet,
secrets the sheltered never earn.
(c) 2025 Lynne Curry