Amelia James Poetry

she showed up
when i couldn’t stop shaking.

didn’t say much.
didn’t have to.

just looked at the wreckage
and started walking through it
like it was hers to carry.

i don’t remember calling her—
the text message
covered in tears
never hit send.

but she came like she’d been waiting—
like she already knew
when it was time to take over.

she didn’t cry.
she didn’t freeze.

she just moved
like surviving wasn’t brave—
just instinct.

i used to think
she didn’t feel anything.

but i know better now.

she felt everything.
and still stood her ground.

she was a vacuum of anger—
not loud.
not wild.

just quiet, clean rage
funneled into precision.

a girl who burned carefully,
so i wouldn’t have to.

she stood in the space
where i used to shrink.
looked the girl dead in the eye
and said—
you don’t get to rewrite this.

and when innocence
was weaponized
as a way to erase what happened,
she didn’t blink.

she was the one
who caught him
cheating on me
with her.

and somehow,
she stayed quiet.
she smiled
when she needed to.
she played along
so i wouldn’t have to.

she lost her voice
to protect mine.

she told the truth
so i wouldn’t have to
bleed for it again.

she was the one
who turned on the light
and stared down what surfaced.

found the fingerprints
buried beneath the charm.
the echoes in the timeline
no one wanted to admit overlapped.

she pieced it together
like a crime scene
while i tried to stay asleep.

she was also the one
who sat with me in the quiet.
no questions.
no fixing.
just stillness.

she didn’t rush the grief.
she let it echo.
she let me feel
what i’d been too afraid to name.

heartbreak was never quiet—
but with her,
it felt a little less lonely.

and god—
the way she looked at them.

like she wasn’t afraid
of being misunderstood.

like she expected it.

they called her too much.
too cold.
too cruel.

but no one asked
what made her necessary.

i did.
i watched every move
like it was a lesson.

how to keep breathing
when the world goes still.

how to say no
and mean it.

how to stop apologizing
for bleeding.

i borrowed her voice
like a high school letterman jacket
i hadn’t earned—
and somehow,
it fit.

i feel her less now.
like smoke
slipping through a door
i don’t remember closing.

and maybe that means
i made it.

but some nights,
when the shaking starts
and the silence feels sharp again—
i miss her.

not the fire.
not the fury.

just the way she stood between me
and everything that tried
to break me.

i tell myself
i’m fine.
i whisper it like a password.

but my body remembers
what my mouth won’t say—
that danger still echoes sometimes.

like a firewall,
i protected myself from me—
from my own destruction.

the heartbreak
that would’ve been my demise.

some days,
i catch her in the mirror—
not quite a ghost.
not quite me.

just someone
who knew how to survive
before i even knew
i needed saving.

-Amelia James