Sometimes I tell stories that get reactions I don’t expect—stories of old pain, the kind I’ve carried for years. But now, I can look back on those moments and see how they shaped me, made me stronger. This poem was born from one of those times—watching someone respond in a way I didn’t see coming.
Don’t Cry for Me
Don’t cry for me. These stories
I tell are not steeped in sorrow,
though they carry the scent
of old smoke and winter rain.
They are the bark of trees
split by lightning and still standing,
the faint trace of a scar
beneath the sleeve of a collared shirt.
Yes, there were hard years—
rooms where silence curled up
in corners like a dog no one fed,
nights I fled to the hills
without hope and peace.
But I don’t speak them
to make you ache.
I speak of them because I lived.
Because I came through.
Like a thistle in the fence row
pushing up purple
through gravel and shit,
I bloomed anyway.
So let me tell it plain—
about the father who lost everything,
including respect and care,
about the mother,
who could make a feast
from a cupboard of almost nothing.
Each story, a lamp lit on a porch that faced the dark, not to keep us out, but to remind us—we are here. We made it.
So don’t cry.
Not for me.
Just listen.
And know
what we are made of.