Adena M'lynn's Voice

by Adena M’lynn There are days when words fold in on themselves— like paper cranes in a storm. When grief grows too heavy for syllables to lift, and the mouth becomes a tomb of unfinished prayers. I’ve tried to name the ache, to pull it out like a splinter of meaning lodged beneath the skin of memory— but it refuses to come clean. Instead, it hums behind my ribs, a silent hymn I can’t translate. Some things don’t have letters. Some pain doesn’t rhyme. Sometimes you open your mouth and what comes out isn’t language— it’s breath, or sob,  or scream, or silence so loud it swallows the room. I’ve written poems that bled through pages, each line a bandage on something I couldn’t explain. I’ve spoken truth in metaphors because the real words were too raw,  too real. And still— it wasn’t enough. Because how do you write the sound of your heart breaking in a language that requires grammar? How do you paint the color of despair without making it beautiful? Some pain refuses to be roman...

By Adena M’lynn (for the little girls whose Nana fell asleep too soon) They say “you’ll know when you’ve had enough”— but I was five learning to disappear under coats and beer cans while Nana passed out before the first commercial break. Her boyfriends had hands like bad magic— making shame appear where my childhood used to be. They got her drunk, got me tipsy, called it fun. I called it weekend. And no one noticed how I folded. How I curled myself into corners and prayed to a blue lampshade. A crack in the wall. A quiet so loud they’d forget I was breathing. But I had Jesus. I had Him like a secret tucked behind my ribs. He didn’t stop them— not with fists, not with fire, but He whispered, look to the light, the same Jesus from Sunday School. And when the men pulled my body like a puppet with no strings, I stared at the blue light like it was Heaven and I was already gone. Enough was the smell of whiskey on my pink gown,  the stench of cigarette smoke in my hair. It was slurred th...