Woman.

The first time I felt shame

I was in the sixth grade.

I came home crying 

Because I felt a predator prey.

I told my parents 

I was crying and they wanted to know why.

Shame came through for the first time.

My fears were irrational.

My tears were unjustified because my thinking was deemed petrified, made up.

There can be no terrors in youth.

The second time I cried, I was irrational because I messed up that table. The table that was was older than me.

There's wisdom in the antique.

I am nothing in my youth.

I hid.

I ran across state lines because there was no belief in my words.

How could there be when something is constructed in the mind of a young woman who knows nothing of herself.

Or so they thought.

The words of doubt singed in my mind,

I questioned every uncertainty from that point on.

One dramatized line after another 

I crafted another reality, according to them.

And maybe I still craft the thing that makes me a victim. 

Or maybe I'm speaking from experience.

They will never know until it's all taken for granted.

Until the words stop bleeding from my being.

I will be invisible.