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whispers
once upon a time
there was a girl who fell in love
with the sound of pencil scratching on paper,
the therapeutic scraping of graphite on its pages
tucking her away
as it promised an escape
made entirely of stories written in the dark
she wrote
through her father’s crackling storms,
the agonizingly volatile winds
of her parents’ enraged cries
that seemed to lash over without warning,
the relentless downpour of salty rain
that occasionally seeped from her mother’s exhausted eyes
she wrote
letting her pencil guide her
through the mist of uncertainty
that often shrouded her future
in a thick veil of grief;
the scratching of the pencil
cutting through
the unabated shouting
splitting the house in half
she wrote
as a release
watching her home being demolished around her,
letting the pages be the eye of the hurricane,
clinging to the belief that she would be strong
that she wouldn't be swayed by the winds
that she would wait, patiently
when it was finally time to rebuild
reconnect
reconcile
she wrote
until her hands grew stiff,
calluses blooming on her otherwise smooth, silky hands
but the girl didn’t mind,
knowing that the calluses marked her skin
as proof of her creations
as stretch marks adorn the skin of a proud mother
but as it became clear that the day to rebuild
would probably never come
as she was finally swept up into the storm,
the last of the strength seeping from her eyes
as her depression hit
world draining of color
drop
by
drop,
she compensated for the lack of hope,
the numbness
with the holes in her body
to cut out the pain
lurking far beyond her skin
feeling herself leak away
drop
by
drop
with every fight
even as the days spent with the pencil grew seldom,
the triumph of writing a story
a long distant memory,
a forgotten tune, perhaps
the girl could feel another part of her,
waiting patiently,
letting the days slip through her bloodstained fingers,
still hopeful, perhaps
because
she knew
beyond the fights
beyond the pain
beyond the ruins that was once a home
somewhere deep inside,
her stories whisper on
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