Ghost Wallet

A poem about emotional adaptation, inherited silence, and the cost of learning to survive by disappearing into yourself.

(Breath- and tone-aware, Let clarity carry weight.)

I do not call it pain anymore.

Pain makes me imagine bruises; something I can point to.

But absence is injury too: slow, quiet, unremarkable.

It does not break you all at once.

It teaches you to break yourself into manageable pieces.

No blueprint. No map.

But still, my body goes back, again and again, to the ache that came before I had words.

Not for a mother.

For someone to keep me soft.

Something to keep me off. To teach me that change would be punished.

What is “home” to a nervous system taught that presence comes with conditions,

that affection has terms?

To be held was to wonder what it would cost.

To be seen was to shrink before the light hit too hard.

To be fed was to owe something unnamed.

Nothing was offered. Everything came with a price.

So I learned to brace. I adapted. Trimmed back joy and postponed hunger.

Rehearsed stillness. Made myself tolerable.

I watched for the shift in voice, in breath, in the air.

I knew the difference between “I’m just tired” and “you’ve taken up too much space.”

I knew how to leave a room without moving.

A smile bought time.

Silence kept me safe.

Love arrived only when I made it easy.

So I got good at being easy.

Made survival look polite.

Became an expert in atmosphere, read every pause like scripture,

predicted rupture like forecast.

Even joy felt dangerous, like getting too high on a ladder.

Now I move through rooms with practiced neutrality.

I watch myself speak.

I feel watched even when no one’s looking.

I wonder:

If they really saw me, would they stay?

And if they stay, who do they think I am?

I manage myself like an exhibit:

clear lighting, safe angles, no sharp edges left exposed.

I touch my skin like I’m waiting to recognize it.

I answer questions quickly, not with truth,

but with closure.

Love feels like inspection.

Praise feels like a trap.

Loneliness, at least, makes sense.

My ghost wallet is full of things I never let myself keep.

I carry love like a forged bill

show it, hide it, ask if it’s real.

I say I have nothing.

But I have years of uncashed worth folded tight

in the part of me that still believes I do not deserve it.

I do not cry anymore.

I allocate emotion.

I ration grief.

Shame moved in a long time ago,

rearranged space and time,

hijacked the language I needed before I knew I would need it.

Now, therapy is strategy.

Intimacy is performance.

Every kind of closeness is negotiation.

I brace before being loved.

I prevent myself from being chosen.

And when someone says they see me,

I wait for what they will take back.

This is not trauma with an endpoint.

It is climate.

A place I have lived in for so long, I stopped noticing

The damage in the foundation.

There was never a structure.

Only instructions for how not to need one.

A frame made of caution.

Windows that apologize for the view.

A roof that leaks when memory gets too heavy.

Even ghosts do not stay here.

Even grief waits outside.

So yes, the ache remains.

Not as memory, but as the shape that learned to live inside without ever asking.

If it could be mine,

I still would not know

how to live in it without apologizing for the space I take.

I would still leave the light off.

Keep my shoes on.

Waiting for someone to take it back.