Amelia James Poetry

I carry the weight of a story
no one else remembers.
It lingers in the marrow of my bones,
echoing like a song I never asked to learn.

You, the conductor of chaos,
wove lies like silk,
soft to the touch but unraveling me,
strand by strand.

I was the scapegoat,
branded “crazy,”
while you painted yourself in colors
only I could see were false.

She hated me—
her disdain carved into the air between us,
sharp as glass, cutting me deeper.
And I?

I hated her,
but more than that,
I hated the way you made me hate myself.

I tried to take power back
in ways I now regret,
becoming a shadow of the person
I wanted to be.

But even as I lashed out,
I was screaming to be believed,
to be seen,
to be more than the villain
you wrote me as in your play.

Thirteen years later,
the stage is empty.
The actors have moved on,
their roles forgotten,
but here I sit,
still holding the script,
rewriting it in the margins,
wondering if anyone else kept a draft.

I’ve reached out,
to her, to ghosts, to memories,
to you.
But silence answers back,
a reminder that closure
is a door I may never find.

So I whisper to myself:
Let go, let go, let go.
But the letting go feels like betrayal—
not of you,
but of the girl I was,
who begged to be understood.

Still, I stand.
The weight is heavy,
but so am I.
And somewhere in the quiet,
I feel a flicker of freedom,
like a match struck in the dark.

This story is mine,
and if no one else remembers,
then I will write the ending myself.

-Amelia James