Adena M'lynn's Voice

  By Adena M’lynn I wore a paper bag like a second skin— not for fashion, but for forgetting. Two holes cut just wide enough to see the world but never let it see me. They said, “Look in the mirror, tell me what you see.” But I couldn’t bear to meet the eyes of a face I was told was too much, too broken, too wrong. The bag whispered safety. It muted the mirror’s judgment, blurred the lines between what I was and what they made me believe. It said, Shut-up, You’re not her. You’re not here. You’re not real. I learned to live through slits— narrow truths, fragmented days, a life filtered through what I thought they could handle. The paper absorbed my silence, soaked up the tears that never dared to fall in public, and crinkled with every movement— a rustling reminder that even hiding makes noise. Sometimes, I dream of setting that bag on fire. Of letting the smoke curl upward like a prayer, Make me whole— not perfect, just pieced back together with gentleness, not glue made of guilt. ...

I said it yesterday like a vow I never meant to keep— “I no longer care what people think.” And it felt like freedom, the way a falling leaf feels like flight until it hits the ground. I told myself this was power. That this was healing. That this was me, raw and roaring— the kind of unfiltered that makes poets weep and ex-lovers regret walking away. But the silence after saying it was a different kind of scream. Not defiant. Not brave. More like someone whispering into an attic box, “Please don’t look too close.” Because the truth is— maybe it’s not that I don’t care. Maybe it’s that I’ve cared so much for so long that caring became a scab I kept picking just to prove I could still feel. Maybe I’ve mistaken dissociation for self-acceptance. Like calling a shutdown an awakening. Like naming numbness “empowerment” because the opposite feels like drowning in slow motion. I am me. With every quirk that once got me bullied and every misdeed I can’t vacuum out of memory. With the timeline t...

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...

Prison, for all its harshness, became a kind of refuge—a sacred ground born from shared suffering. Behind the walls, among the clamor and control, lived a quiet truth: most of the women there were not just inmates, but survivors—survivors of some of the worst atrocities. Nearly 85% carried the scars of violence, much of it rooted in childhood, etched deep into bone and memory. Shame ran through them like blood—unspoken, but ever-present. And yet, in that broken place, something unexpected emerged: sisterhood. A space where tenderness was rare but deeply craved. Where being seen—truly seen—and heard without judgment became its own kind of healing. Prison isn’t just steel and concrete. It’s a suspended world where time slows and pain echoes. Every mistake becomes a splinter driven deeper under the nail. And your name—your past—follows you like a shadow so heavy, few dare to reach for you. But within that shadow, there are women who hold one another up. And somehow, that makes even the da...