⸻
EL-LIE
I was not beaten last.
I was beaten best.
For when their hands grew tired
and their mouths found other prey,
I continued the work with care and discipline.
I learned precision.
I learned depth.
I learned silence.
Do not mistake me —
this was not madness.
This was order.
I made myself the site of punishment
so the world need not bother.
I spared them the effort.
I spared myself surprise.
And oh — the relief of control.
To choose the wound.
To choose the hunger.
To choose the rule that strangled me
slowly enough to feel like virtue.
I called it strength.
Then came the great lie,
sweet as forgiveness:
You don’t have to feel this anymore.
And for a while — I didn’t.
The drugs did what prayers never dared.
They quieted the jury in my skull.
They let me sit in my own skin
without wanting to crawl out of it.
I said:
“This is freedom.”
“This is medicine.”
“This is me, finally unbroken.”
But every miracle demands a tithe.
Soon the cure wanted all of me.
Soon I owed it breath, memory, future.
Soon the silence it gave
was no longer peace
but absence.
I had escaped pain
only to erase myself entirely.
And now —
now they ask me to remember.
To write the list.
To speak the names.
To touch the bruise without becoming it.
They call this healing.
I call it the most dangerous thing I have ever done.
Because pain, I understand.
Pain obeys.
Truth does not.
Truth looks back at you
and does not flinch.
Yet still I stand here.
Just clean.
Just about safe.
Not always, but mostly, just about present.
And that —
that is one of the truly honest things
I have so far learned to do.
Mind-in-motion 