Adena M'lynn's Voice

by Adena M’lynn My life was protecting the secret— the one no one dared to name. It hid beneath lullabies and locked doors, beneath “good girl bad girl” and “don’t tell.” See, childhood trauma wears a smile, a painted grin for Sunday mornings, for picture days and family prayers, while the heart trembles behind the lens. The man, the woman— they wear masks stitched from charm and scripture. I shouted, “I wear his ring.” a Mason’s little secret,  sewn beneath his smile,  no, THEIR smiles. Their hands know the art of deception, their tongues plant seeds that bloom into silence. You know the deeds they wish to sow— not love, not light, but shame dressed in Sunday clothes. And I— I was the soil they buried IT in, a child too young to understand THE protecting of the secret was how they kept me small, how they stole my voice and called it obedience. But even buried things remember the sun. And I am remembering now. The secret may have silenced me once— but not forever. I have learn...

by Adena M’lynn I found her— no, them— at sixty-three. A lifetime later, and the mirror finally cracked wide enough for me to see what had been hiding in plain sight. Dissociative Identity Disorder— they call it a diagnosis, but to me, it’s a roll call of every ghost I ever made to keep myself alive. Each one wore my face, but different eyes— some kind, some terrified, some tired of the fight. And now I stand in the aftermath, counting the wreckage of a life I thought was mine alone. How do you say sorry for the hurt you never meant, for the words another voice spoke through your trembling mouth? How do you own the pain when the hand that caused it was yours— and not yours? I see the faces I love— each one marked with the fingerprints of confusion, with the bruises of my becoming. And I wonder— did they ever know how fractured I was? How every smile I gave was held together with invisible glue and shaking prayers? There is carnage in remembering. In realizing that survival was not clea...

Class assignment 10/23 -Trilogy/Spoken Word Template    Part I “Do We See?” Spoken Word Freestyle template Written by Adena M’lynn Do we see — or do we just look? Because there’s a difference. Looking is quick, seeing is costly. We walk past people like they’re scenery, like pain belongs only to strangers, like hunger and homelessness don’t wear familiar faces. Do we see the woman counting her change at the register, or just the line behind her growing impatient? Do we see the child quiet in the corner — not shy, but afraid — because home ain’t safe? We’ve trained our eyes to edit out discomfort. We blur the parts of humanity that don’t fit our feed. But the eyes of the soul — they see what the world hides. They see exhaustion behind polite smiles, broken dreams in grocery store aisles, tears that never make it to daylight. Do we see our neighbors or just the numbers? Do we see the need or just the nuisance? When Jesus saw, He wept. When we see, we scroll. Maybe seeing is the ...