Terrified

I was the terrified little girl standing behind my mother's shadows and the shadow of her tears,
I was the horrified little girl, steamrolled to the wall as boys dug up between my thighs,
With their hands to my mouth, my tongue choking back down my throat fighting to ask why,
I was the terrorized little girl's whose head shrunk between her knees,
As his father raised his hand to smack her, only for playing in the trees, 
But now I am the joyful woman who knows where she belongs,
Who listens to the God that lifts her up when everyone else tells her that she's wrong. 














-anna sluder 

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