He wasn’t born lucky. Nobody handed him a map. He learned early that some of us come into this world half-built, and the rest is on us. So he carved his name into time, steady and deliberate — a slow rebellion written in scars.
The city didn’t raise him. It tolerated him. Concrete and glass can’t teach you much, but they’ll listen if you bleed honest enough. He made peace with that kind of silence — the kind that hums between streetlights and memory.
There was a facility once — a place that smelled like rust, regret, and second chances. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but he stayed. Sometimes, a man doesn’t need comfort — he needs a place where the noise inside his head finally echoes back. In that echo, he found rhythm. In rhythm, he found himself. No blueprints. No saviors. Just repetition. Each motion a prayer, each mistake a gospel of survival.
He doesn’t worship. He works. He doesn’t beg. He endures. And if you ask what drives him, he’ll tell you the truth — it’s not pride or anger, not anymore. It’s the memory of a boy who promised a broken world he’d walk out standing.
The wall split open at the hairline crack, and she came through screaming. Not with sound, but with vibration—the kind you feel crawling in your teeth, rattling in your bones. Her hair—roots alive with autumn rot and evergreen hunger—whipped outward like roots searching for soil.
Where’d you go? She’s alive, but barely. She stood out, so loud, so bright, you could see. Her silence sings to me, as if she belted out a primal scream. She was so loud, it’s wrong—she was strong. Where did we go? Tonight, the Sun will hum its final hymn.
She tastes the blood from her hidden, unhealed wounds. The plaster burns her skin; it’s slowly melting her spirit. There’s an itch under the surface she can’t stop clawing at, something crawling deep in the marrow, carving names she doesn’t want to remember.
Blood streaks her cheek, though she hadn’t been struck. It seeps from a single dark spot beneath her left eye, like the wall itself was leaking into her.
The air around her trembles. Not with rage, not with fear, but with the ache of a body caught between two worlds—one solid, one unfinished.
And still she screamed. And still, I listened. Because sometimes a scream is the only way a wound remembers it’s alive.
Author’s Note: This piece was written for Di’s Three Things Challenge — today’s words: hairline, itch, spot. Much appreciation to Di for keeping the ink restless and the imagination cornered. I’ll be back to flash fiction once I iron out the kinks of Narrative Forge. Thanks for hanging with me — telling stories is my happy place, having you enjoy them is just the perks of the gig.
I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. I’m not allowed to be.
Where I come from, fear is a luxury we were born too broke to afford. Vulnerability wasn’t something we dismissed—it was something we were denied. It was kept behind locked doors, like heirlooms we didn’t inherit.
My grandfather didn’t teach with words. He taught with what he didn’t say. He taught me how to keep the jaw tight, how to pray in silence, how to hold grief like a second spine. He had crafty ways of navigating rooms where he was expected to be invisible, but somehow always left a shadow. He taught me not how to cry—but how to endure the crying of others without blinking.
They told us to walk tall, but not too tall. To speak, but not loudly. To lead, but never forget we’re replaceable. Strong—always. Seen—rarely. Heard—only when invited.
I learned to carry myself like a verdict. The years didn’t soften me—they carved me. And somewhere between funeral suits and morning trains, I mistook resilience for religion.
I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. I’m not allowed to be.
Because they’re still watching. Because weakness stains in places bleach can’t reach. Because I carry names no one etched into stone, but I wear them anyway—in the bend of my back and in the tightening of my breath whenever the world grows quiet enough to remember.
I’ve loved with fists. I’ve buried more brothers than birthdays. I’ve stared into mirrors and seen ghosts blink back.
And I’m still here. Which means I’m still dangerous.
Some days, I hear the voices—low and layered, like drums beneath concrete. Whispers at a distance. Ancestral static tuning itself in the back of my skull.
My father, maybe—never said “I love you,” but left it folded into a clean shirt and the sound of a deadbolt clicking after midnight.
Or the ones who never made it past eighteen, who hover behind my ribs like secrets I’ll never tell.
Some of them speak in riddles. Some in warnings. And some just laugh—cheeky, almost cruel: “Look at this one, still trying to turn ghosts into gospel.”
I remember the nippy mornings, before light. Cold air that slapped you awake. The kind that taught you pain was just a temperature shift you’d survive if you didn’t flinch. Those days made your bones ache—but they made your will sharper, too.
And now, standing here, with all of that folded inside me like a fire I never asked to carry, I wonder:
What have I done with all I’ve been given? Have I honored the ones before me? Or just mirrored their silence?
What have I left for the ones next? A trail of smoke? A shut door? A story they won’t want to finish?
What if the bravest thing isn’t being unafraid— but being seen?
Not as legend. Not as weapon. Not as sacrifice. But as person— messy, aching, unfinished.
What if legacy isn’t built on who endured the most, but who dared to feel what others refused to name?
Maybe I’ve been strong too long. Maybe strength ain’t the absence of fear, but the courage to admit you needed saving too.
Not a statue. Not a sermon. Not a ghost. Just a man— …and maybe that’s where the healing begins. And the trouble ends with me.
Authors Note:
This piece was sparked by Di’s 3TC challenge—and yes, I stole a line from Stacey Johnson’s poem order. Is it still stealing if I tell you up front? (Shrugs.) Anyway, as usual, I’m grateful to be inspired by friends who make me write better, feel deeper, and laugh louder. You know who you are.
I scream every time I’m asked to compromise who I am, what I believe. There are days I walk through this like a ghost—quiet, invisible, barely tethered to the world. I’ve worn this skin too long to pretend anymore. I’ve learned that silence is never neutral. It collects. It bruises. It builds a coffin for the self.
How long did I expect integrity to outweigh ignorance?
The shame cuts deepest when I remember the things I was asked to do to be accepted. Asked to perform, asked to mute the fire, asked to shrink for the comfort of others who never deserved my story in the first place. And like a fool, I tried. I polished my voice. I spoke in softened syllables. I tiptoed like I was walking on eggshells—not to protect myself, but to protect their illusion of safety.
But here’s the truth: Their comfort was never my duty.
This world has corrupted too much, taken too many of us who had something real to say. It props up empty vessels and paints them gold, calls it culture, calls it “marketable.” Meanwhile, those of us who bleed truth are told we’re too much, too raw, too difficult to brand.
They wanted me to smile like some hollow doll—something quiet, something that won’t fight back when they put words in my mouth. But I’m not plastic. I’m not hollow. I don’t bend like that anymore.
I carry my scars with intention now.
Let them call it anger. Let them call it ungrateful. I call it knowing. Knowing that every time I was asked to “adjust,” they weren’t asking for kindness—they were asking for obedience.
I’m done apologizing for the shape my soul takes.
Author’s Note
This piece was inspired in part by prompts from FOWC, RDP, and WOTD. Thank you all for the sparks you give. Your work matters.
for those who know what it’s like to be visible but not believed
Every day is another lesson in invisibility. Not the kind you choose, not the soft fade of a disappearing act. This is the kind handed down in glances that slide past you. In doors that stay closed just a second longer when you’re approaching. In the space you leave behind when you’re gone, and no one notices the shape of your absence.
You become fluent in the language of indifference. You learn the weight of unasked questions. You memorize the way people say “I didn’t see you there” like it’s a kindness, instead of an indictment.
There is a peculiar violence in being overlooked. Not bruised. Not broken. Just… reduced. Down to skin, down to stereotype, down to background noise. They don’t mean to erase you— and somehow, that makes it worse.
They’ll say you’re quiet. You’ll wonder if they’ve ever actually listened.
You wear shame like a second skin. Not because you earned it, but because somewhere along the way, someone handed it to you like inheritance and you forgot how to put it down.
You stand still in a world built to move around you— fast, loud, full of curated meaning. And you begin to question:
Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with this lens that always finds me blurred?
You’ve learned to map your pain in silence. Each breath is a kind of protest. Each blink a refusal to disappear entirely.
There are veins beneath your skin that look like lightning— not because you are struck, but because you are always just about to burn.
And yet you don’t. Not fully.
You endure. Not in glory. Not with applause. But with defiance. The quiet kind. The kind that goes unnoticed until someone says:
“I didn’t realize you were carrying that much.”
And you smile without smiling, because you know the truth:
You were always carrying that much. They just never asked to know.
Can you howl when there is no one there to hear you? Is your passion only for public consumption? I’m frostbitten by your whispers.
There was a time I needed your touch. I needed your attention. Not all of it—just enough to matter. Not to me. I needed it to matter to you.
But you blinked, and I shattered. You turned, and I calcified into someone else’s silence. They say the world ends in fire or ice— I know both. Your heat was conditional. Your absence, absolute.
Some men beg for war to distract from the wound. Me? I just wear the hood tighter, pull it close like a secret I still want to believe in.
I walk through your memory like a half-burned gospel, rubbing ash on my skin like anointing oil. There’s still a spark behind my teeth, but no one’s left to kiss the smoke.
And even now— when I speak, my voice curls like steam off a pot no one stayed to stir. …and silence never needed an audience.
Memoirs of Madness 