While other kids were taught to live,
I was trained to endure.
Their homes held warmth—
mine held warning.
They reached for skies,
I learned to fall quiet,
to land without echo,
to bleed where no one looked.
They breathed love like air,
steady and clean.
I tasted love like rust,
a bitter drip,
just enough to ache,
never enough to heal.
By the time they found their wings,
I was already buried beneath my own silence.