There was a girl once
who swore she didn’t care.
She’d roll her eyes,
laugh too loudly in the hallway,
pretend she wasn’t watching
for the way your shoulders shifted
when you turned toward her.
She thought she was hiding it well—
the way her pulse jumped
when you said her name,
the way she replayed
your half-smile
as if it meant something more
than teenage electricity.
But the truth is
she was always softer than she looked.
She wrote feelings in margins,
scribbled confessions on paper
she never intended to send,
and practiced the words
she was too scared to say out loud.
You never noticed
how she memorized you
in pieces—
your laugh,
your hands,
the way you walked ahead
but always slowed for her to catch up.
You never saw the version of her
that whispered your name
into the spine of her notebook
like a secret,
or the way she held every moment
as if it could break.
And she—
that girl—
never realized
how much of herself
she was pouring into someone
who was only passing through.
But she kept writing anyway.
Because even then,
before life hardened her edges
and love taught her weight,
she knew something:
you can’t love quietly
and call it living.
She hasn’t forgotten that.
Reading Trauma Mama: Velvet & Taboo 