The House That Never Slept

The house was built of silence, but silence cracked like glass. A father’s rage was thunder, each night another blast. His hands were storms unending, his words were sharpened knives, he carved his anger into walls, and into fragile lives. A mother stood like weary stone, her strength both curse and gift, she held the roof from caving in, though her spirit could not lift. The child learned shadows early, to shrink, to disappear, to count the seconds in the dark, to swallow every tear. Home was not a refuge, but a battlefield of scars, a place where love was absent, and hope hid among the stars. Yet even in the rubble, a spark refused to die, a broken child kept dreaming, kept asking still: “But why?” Years became oceans traveled, waves that taught me pain, but also how to rise again, to break the binding chain. My father’s voice is distant now, his shadow fades with time, my mother’s tired courage still echoes in my spine. I am not the shattered house, nor the bruises left behind, I am the light that found its way, the love I fought to find. And though the past still lingers, its weight will never own the man who walks beyond the wreck of that abusive home.