All I have to give you

All I have to give you

Is this self

Often feeling fractured, bruised and lost

Disoriented from hundred traumas

Too deep to name

All I have to give you

Are my honest feelings

Vulnerable, raw and real

Don’t ask me to pretend

To be something or someone else

Because you find difficult truths too painful to bear

The truth is

That in years past

I opened my tender heart

To those who didn’t value it

They told me there was something wrong

With me feeling as I did

Because they could not fully understand

How much trauma I had lived through

And how agonising it felt

To be so alone

At such a young age

With so much trauma

And no place to hide

Cast out and adrift half a world away

So now if somedays I feel raw

And like my skin is gone

Know this

Reality is stripping back my layers

Leaving me with no hiding place

And I must face this truth

Come hell or high water

Who I am Is not conditional

On anyone’s approval

If you can’t honour me and my pain

Then please just let me be