Amelia James Poetry

they called it gossip.
called it drama.
said i was tearing him down
by telling the truth
out loud.

as if silence
was the holier wound.

they didn’t see
the wild animal
caught in rusted steel—
the blood,
the flinch,
the instinct to bite
before being hurt again.

the trap?
he set it.
baited it with love.
with God.
with promises
he never meant to keep.
with a voice
that knew how to sound holy.

and when it snapped,
i screamed.
and that—
that was the problem.

not him.
not the break.
not the blood.

me.
my volume.
my nerve.
my refusal
to whimper pretty.

they didn’t ask
what it cost
to claw my way out.
didn’t ask
why i flinched
at hands that looked like help.

by the time anyone reached in,
i was already growling.
not because i wanted to be cruel—
but because pain
left me no other language.

they said
i made it worse.
said i should’ve kept quiet.
said i should’ve healed
more gracefully.

but they didn’t stay long enough
to hear the part
where i begged.
where i wept.
where i tried
to explain.

they cared more
about my reaction
than what caused it.
more about keeping peace
than keeping me.

someone said
forgiveness
would help me heal.

but i was still
chewing through the bone
just to get out.

let’s not mistake the offense—
it wasn’t my cry,
or the volume of my pain.
the crime
was him
setting the trap
in the first place.

i wasn’t born feral.
i became it
slowly—
when broken, rusted tools
were more useful
than polished sermons
and pretty church pews.

-Amelia James