The Hands That Never Leave

I was a child, yet they broke me,
their shadows pressed into my skin,
bruises written in silence,
a secret I never asked to carry.

Even now, years fold into years,
but the nights replay themselves—
flashbacks burn like unextinguished fire,
and I wake to the same locked room.

Touch is no comfort to me,
it is a prison that drags me back,
every hand a reminder of his hand,
every crowd another suffocation.

I walk among people,
but I do not belong to them,
their laughter cuts like shards of glass,
their nearness steals the air from my lungs.

The man who stole my childhood
is not gone—
he lingers behind me like a shadow,
and I swear I hear his footsteps in others.

The world tells me to heal,
but healing is a lie,
because the scars are not skin-deep,
they are chains wrapped around my spirit.

And so I breathe in fragments,
haunted, hunted,
a woman stitched together with silence,
still running from the hands that never leave.
By - Palak Sawant