the perfect child

Perfection wears a mask so tight, it suffocates the soul beneath—until all that's left is a silent scream no one ever hears.

I became the perfect child,
not because I wanted to,
but because I had no choice.
Quiet.
Compliant.
A shadow against the wall,
invisible in my stillness,
a ghost haunting my own life.
I learned how to disappear
long before I understood
what it meant to be gone.

Perfection is a form of death.
I carved away the parts of me
that screamed,
the parts that wanted,
the parts that bled.
Each piece fell away
like flesh from bone,
until there was nothing left
but this shell—
polished,
smooth,
and empty.

I hollowed myself out,
scraped away anything
that made me real,
made me feel.
I became perfect
so I could survive the chaos,
but in the end,
the silence consumed me.

Do you know what it’s like
to strangle your own voice?
To choke it down
until you forget
it was ever there?
I do.
I did it every day,
swallowing screams like broken glass,
feeling them cut my throat,
until I could taste the blood of my own silence.

Perfection isn’t a shield.
It’s a mask that fuses to your skin,
until you can’t tell
where it ends and you begin.
I became so perf…