my adolescence

I came home carrying the weight of other people’s gaze,
every step a reminder
that I didn’t deserve to be seen.

I looked at myself in the mirror
and my face was a stranger I hated,
every line, every shadow, every mark
a silent reproach.

My body wasn’t mine,
it was a space that rejected the light,
a prison of shapes I could not love.

People drifted away without words,
and I, trapped in my reflection,
felt the world leaving me behind,
an outcast from laughter and embraces.

I cried in silence,
tears sliding down mute walls,
cursing myself for being ugly,
for being insufficient,
for being someone nobody wanted.

The bathroom became a sanctuary
of long cries and broken whispers,
praying to disappear
or to become someone who wasn’t me.