No lullabies

 

No one sang me to sleep.
The house hummed with other hearts —
the baby’s cry,
the kettle’s sigh,
the sound of my own breath learning not to make a sound.

There was milk for him,
a lap for him,
a light that dimmed gently over his dreams.
For me, only the hallway’s blue shadow,
the hum of a mother’s tired spine turning away.

I learned early that quiet means safe.
That wanting is dangerous.
That love, when it comes,
comes late and looks like guilt.

I carried myself to bed.
I tucked myself in with the smell of soap,
with the faint echo of a voice
meant for someone else.

No one sang me to sleep,
so I grew up listening to other things —
to walls breathing,
to doors closing softly behind people who never looked back.
I learned the rhythm of absence,
how to rock myself with it,
how to whisper to no one:
it’s okay, you can stop crying now.

And now, when someone tries to love me,
their warmth sounds too loud,
their touch feels like a question I don’t know how to answer.
I flinch from the softness I begged for.
I mistrust the tenderness I starved in silence.

Because once, I waited for a song that never came.
And the silence grew up inside me —
learned to hum back.