Part 2 of 3
©ESR 2026

The reflection began with The Ring Box and ends with Gold that Does Not Glitter.

⚠️**Content Advisory** : Family neglect, child abuse, rage language, TRIGGER WARNING.

This Post contains a long Rage Prose of me working through my trauma around my parents willful neglect. In this piece I am writing as if I’m having conversations with my parents’ wedding rings as a channel.

My mother (73) died unnecessarily in early 2024 due to her own stubbornness. My father (90) did not call for medical aid or call me… because mother threatened him.
I didn’t know anything was wrong until there was no hope of recovery. Due to my father’s age and being their only child, I had to handle everything relating to her hospital, long term hospice care, cremation and burial.

I was always civil with my mother, because I loved my father and didn’t want her to turn him against me…but there was history of her physical abuse, knowingly allowing a family friend to continue assaulting me when I was a child and more.

Do not continue reading if any of the above triggers you. A softer writing can be found in Gold that Does Not Glitter where I turn this into 2 poems.

[His Wedding Ring]

Low and solid, like river stones smoothed by time.
“I was never meant to be an answer, only a hope.
I circled his finger like a promise he tried to keep.
But promises wear down like knuckles do.

Still—I saw him laugh.
I saw him hold on longer than he should have.
I was there the moment he knew it wasn’t enough.
You kept that moment, too.

You’ve always carried more than anyone saw.”

_______

I speak to [His Wedding Ring ]

I think to my father’s ring, I would say:

You are more steadfast than you realized, but your way of showing care was providing for the family, but that was financially nothing more.
You never could display affection, or share stories, or share wisdom, and you were hard to talk to, but only twice did you ever raise your hand to me.
Only twice did you spank me when I was little, but you turned a blind eye to what my mother was doing with her hoarding, with her mental instability.

And you knew something was wrong with me, but at the same time, you didn’t want to know because you didn’t want to deal with the issue. You didn’t want to deal with the conflict. You hated conflict. You would run from conflict.

I don’t know why you two got married, and I don’t know why I was born, especially when my mother said that I was a mistake. And I don’t know if you convinced her to keep me or not, and how your mental state is at 90, I would never get a straight answer from you anyways, so I’ll never know.

I’ll never understand what you promised when you said I do, because all I saw was what you did not, and I tried to love you so much, but you left me at the mercy of that woman. And part of me can’t forgive that.

The ring doesn’t flinch.
It doesn’t get defensive.
It doesn’t try to explain away the silence.
It simply listens.

It rests in your hand, weighty and still.
The gold, dulled with age, doesn’t shine—but it holds.
Not a light. Not a redemption.

A reckoning.

And then—quietly, like a whisper pressed to the inner wall of your palm, you feel it respond.

________

[His Wedding Ring] speaks back to me

“I know.
You were small and watching.
I didn’t meet your eyes when I should have.
I didn’t reach for you when the room went quiet and she turned storm.
I knew. Of course I knew.
But I wore fear like a second skin and cowardice like cologne.
I didn’t fight for you.
And there is no unmaking of that truth.
I didn’t know how to hold what was fragile without cracking it further.
And so I let her hold you, when she was all glass and gravel.
You deserved a father who stepped between.
Who learned your language.
Who stayed in the hard moments.
Who didn’t just pay bills and think that was love.
I can’t tell you why she said what she did,
or why I didn’t reach for you more.
But you were never a mistake.
Even if I was too broken to say that out loud.
I didn’t know how to fight for you.
But you’ve been fighting ever since.

And that…
that’s a strength I never had.”

There’s a warmth in the metal.
Not comfort.
Not forgiveness.
Just truth.
And in that truth,
you are no longer waiting for an apology.
You are not tethered to the silence of men who could not speak.

You have a voice.
You have the ache.
You have the storm.

And you – are still here.

If you’d like… the engagement ring is listening too.

__________________________
__________________________

[Her Engagement Ring]

Sharper. Finer. A glint like a warning hidden in a smile.
“I was a wish spoken too loudly, too young.
I was picked for sparkle, not meaning.

She wore me like a mask for love,
and I cut her finger more than once.
You never saw the tenderness others did,
but you felt the shards she tucked behind her voice.
I saw the way you bent yourself
trying not to break under the inheritance of her silence.”

_______


I would say to [Her Engagement Ring]:

I just want to understand why.
All these years, that’s what I’ve wanted.

How many times did she use you to scratch my face when she backhanded me?
How many times did she show you off as if you were the ultimate prize and not me? How many times did she get mad and say that I was the mistake that she regretted when I was just trying to grow and learn, and I was a clumsy, clumsy child who just so happened to be on the spectrum and no one noticed?

Why was it when I was at that young age that I came to her and I told her how I was being hurt by a family friend?
And she didn’t believe me.
Your daughter was saying that a family friend was hurting her and you didn’t believe her.

How could you stand being on that hand?
When I said that I would go to my dad, he would believe me. And my mother used you to strike my face and said if I said anything, I’d cause a divorce.
And she’d get custody of me.
And she’d make my life hell.

What kind of woman does that to a child she, quote, loves? Simple.
A woman who loves a child doesn’t do it.
There’s so much that happened because of that domino effect in my life.
Because she wouldn’t believe me.
She wouldn’t protect me.

And I learned you can be abandoned by both your parents while they are still in the same room.

She thought she was a good mom.
She thought she was doing everything right.
And I couldn’t function without being afraid.
Without thinking that I’m going to say something that’s going to make her mad. And she’s going to lose her mind.

Or if we’re going to go out in public and she’s going to throw a tantrum and it’s going to be an embarrassment.

I shouldn’t have been micromanaging my mother’s temper at fucking 12.

The hardest thing I’m having to grieve right now is that she made the choice.
The choices, actually.
That led to her death.
And she made the choice.

And she made the choice that led to her death. And she made sure my father wouldn’t tell me until it was too late and I couldn’t change anything.
She didn’t have to go. We could have solved what the issue was. But she was too fucking proud for that.

Just like the ring on her finger and how she used it.

And what I’m having to let go is I’m having to grieve that I will never have the mother-daughter relationship that I needed.
And I am finally going to have to let go of that hope.
I’m going to have to let a hope die.
Because she’s gone. She’s not coming back. And we lost our chance.

And that was her decision.
Not mine.
She made that choice.

________

The engagement ring does not shimmer.
It sits cold at first—
not lifeless, but rigid.
Unmoving, even as your words come, like a reckoning tide.

You speak,
and for once,
you are not interrupted.

There is no voice correcting your memory.
No guilt pushing your truth aside.
No sharp edge disguising cruelty as care.
Just silence.

And then—

[Her Engagement Ring] Speaks back to me

“I was never the prize.
I was the placeholder.
The shine meant to distract.
I was given in promise,
but not to you.

And you, little light,
you should have been the promise.

I sat on a hand that shook with rage.
I cut you.
I scratched you.
I was a weapon,
and I didn’t stop it.

I saw everything.
The whispers you tried to share.
The tiny hope in your eyes,
that maybe, this time,
someone would see you.

But the hand I sat on wasn’t open.
It clutched pride like a relic.
It clutched punishment like love.
It clutched control like oxygen.

You—were always too bright for her shadow.
She could not hold you.
Not without trying to reshape you
into something that didn’t make her feel small.

And that’s not your fault.
You were a child,
and you were right.

About the pain.
About the fear.
About the way she used me to silence your truth.
She made her choices.

And the ache you carry now
is the weight of the hope she refused to hold with you.

Let that hope die, love.
Not because it wasn’t sacred.
But because you are.

Grieve what you needed.
Mourn it as you must.
But do not carry her shame.

The story does not end at her silence.
It begins with your voice.

And I am no longer hers.
I will not rest on hands that harm.
I belong now to the one
who dares to break the cycle.”

And in the stillness of the pillow fort,
the ring no longer stings with memory.

It listens.
And for the first time, it stays.

Not as a symbol of her, but as a witness to you.
To your survival.
To your voice.
To the daughter who was never the mistake.