©ESR 2026

⚠️**Content Advisory** This poem addresses childhood trauma, emotional abuse, and neglect through the lens of a personal photograph.
It contains references to unsafe home environments, the loss of innocence, and the lasting effects of early harm. While there is no graphic content, the emotional themes may be intense or triggering for some readers. Please take care while reading.

She shouldn’t know how to smile like this,

a haunted curve, soft at the edges,

cold at the core.

At six years old, her eyes already hold

a depth no child should have,

dark water that knows it’s safer

to stay still, unseen,

while the sharks circle deep below.

I want to break every fin that ever circled her.

The smile bends in all the right places for the camera,

but halts a breath before joy,

a survival smile,

practiced by children who’ve learned

their truth ruins the room.

I would rather she ruined every room

than learn to shrink inside one.

She is supposed to be the one

believing in wishes and sugared plums,

not a quiet sentry in Santa’s lap,

tiny shoulders squared against storms,

watching for that shift in the air,

that prickle that means trouble is coming.

I would tear the weather from the sky if I could.

She does not yet know she is a witness

to the folly of man,

only that she is right in her seeing

even when they punish her for being wrong.

Her pockets are already heavy

with unspeakable things,

stones she will carry for decades,

shards of someone else’s broken dreams.

I would empty them,

fill them with seashells,

with marbles, with anything but this.

Thirty years later, I look at her and burn,

for the injustice of one so young

being shaped by fear.

I want to cut the hands

that taught her to flinch,

set fire to the raven’s wing

of every lie she was fed.

I need to wrap her in a blanket so thick

no shouting could tear it open.

She smiles for the camera,

a red suit promise of magic and light.

But look closer.

Those eyes carry a winter

no sleigh could outrun.

The photo will smile forever.

And I will always know the truth

that froze inside her.

If I could,

I would lift her from that chair mid-laugh,

steal her away from brittle tinsel

and hollow cheer,

carry her into a place

where the only thing she had to hold

was wonder

and I would never set her down.