The silence between the storms

She smiled in front of strangers, but behind closed doors she broke, a whisper, walking on shattered glass, every word, a smoke choke joke. He called it, love, with hands like chain, with eyes that burned her bone, she learned to read the room too well a war fall all alone. Her mornings came and bruises, not all shades of skin, some live beneath her heartbeat, where the light could never win. She tiptoed through his thunder, made peace with every crack, but no one sees the damage done by always watching your back. Her voice grew soft from silence, afraid to speak, to cry, because each tear peeled in honesty he’d use to justify. But still within her trembling, a fire refuses to die, a small and scared ember beneath a tear thing sky. She dreamed of running rivers, or wind that did not stain, of a love that lifts, not cages, that heels instead of wrings. And one day she will rise again, not in fear, but pride, for though she tried to clip her wings, her soul still learned to fly.