Adena M'lynn's Voice

 by Adena M’lynn I wasn’t born with an asterisk, but I should’ve been. Right there on the birth certificate— next to weight, length, time of arrival— a tiny * curled like a warning label, a whisper that says, subject to harm. survival may resemble defiance. terms and conditions may apply. Nobody tells you the first scream you let out might echo for decades. That the cradle isn’t always safer than the storm, and sometimes love comes with latex gloves and non-disclosure agreements. I didn’t read the fine print. Didn’t know “you’re so mature for your age” was code for, *we’ll exploit you and call it a compliment. Didn’t see the clause that read, *this child will become fluent in apology, even for things that weren’t her fault. Didn’t realize the survival skills— those sharp-edged gifts she carved from trauma— would one day be criminalized. Would send her straight to hell, to prison, where she’d be taught how to bury pain like it was contraband, taught to catalog her hurt like inventor...

The mirror was never just glass. It was judgment. Memory. War. For most of her life, she avoided it unless absolutely necessary—just long enough to do her hair, to check for bruises she didn’t remember getting, or to make sure her eyes didn’t betray how tired she really was. But she never looked in the mirror. Not really. Because when she did, she didn’t just see herself. She saw all of them. The girl who flinched. The woman who stole. The inmate. The patient. The liar. The lover. The mother. And for a long time, all she could feel was shame. Her body had been taken, used, ignored. Her reflection bore the weight of other people’s choices—hands that hurt her, eyes that undressed her, voices that named her things she never asked to be. And so she stopped claiming it as her own. It became a costume. A disguise. Something to hide behind or use as a weapon when she needed to survive. Sex was her weapon of choice. And sometimes, her punishment. Maggie, her executioner knew how to dole out pa...