Reclaimed

Congratulations, your piece has qualified to move on to the next round of our contest! *The Unsealed

Reclaimed

Had I known what it meant when my stomach flipped as the girl in gym class sat beside me to tie her shoes,

had I understood the truth in the way I rested against the saxophone player on the band bus

her jaw cut sharp, her shoulders broad, her sax case under her feet

so much might’ve been different.

If I’d known I wasn’t broken.

But I didn’t know.

I didn’t know that giving my sixteen-year-old body to the boy who trailed me like a stray dog through our small-town high school

didn’t mean I owed him anything

not my future, not my faith, not a covenant sealed in Jesus’ name.

But we were raised in youth group pews and purity pledges,

where sex before marriage meant you were broken,

and marriage was the only glue.

So, when I gave in, on a sleeping bag in a tent pitched on his parents’ patch of dirt,

I thought the damage was done.

And two years later, I did what good girls do:

I said yes at the altar to make it all “right.”

In a town where the cow pastures were wide, but the futures were fenced in,

I married the boy I’d been told was mine.

Not because I wanted to.

But because I thought I had to.

We were never right,

and I know this:

I’d started peeling myself out long before the goodbye

quietly, carefully, like escaping a burning house barefoot.

I never warmed to the idea of sacrificing my body on the altar of marital duty.

But that didn’t stop the expectations.

So, I learned to vanish.

Before anyone ever claimed me in ways I couldn’t claim myself,

I’d already left

drifted up and out, hovering like smoke above the wreckage.

That’s how I survived.

Until the day she walked in.

A new hire at the library.

Robin.

Short, spiky brown hair. Coffee-colored eyes. A lopsided grin that cracked me open.

She didn’t smile like everyone else.

She looked right through me—steady, amused, unafraid.

She stuck out her hand and said, “Howdy, darlin’,”

in a drawl so casual it slipped beneath my skin.

That handshake held more than welcome.

It held rescue.

A quiet lifeline I didn’t yet know I was reaching for.

Had I known that being with her, truly with her, was even possible

had I known I could survive outside the rigid walls of church, marriage, family, and God

had I known the world wouldn’t end if I came out,

I might’ve let myself fall.

I might’ve let myself rise.

But I didn’t know.

So, I stayed.

I buried the spark.

I swallowed the longing.

I endured.

I birthed the babies.

I sang hymns with a hollow chest.

I tithed with trembling hands.

I showed up.

And when the ache refused to die,

I tried to pray it away.

I confessed.

I repented.

I attended the meetings behind blacked-out windows in the church basement.

Conversion therapy didn’t save me.

It didn’t fix me.

Because it was never meant to.

I thought I was there to be made straight.

But what they really wanted was silence.

Abstinence.

Erasure.

They told me I could still be holy,

so long as I never acted on who I was.

But I’d already tasted truth.

I’d already been held.

And once you’ve known that kind of light,

you can’t go back to shadow.

Eventually, life collapsed in on itself,

and in the rubble, I finally saw what was real.

No one else could save me.

Not love, not religion, not the façade of perfection.

Only the truth.

And what I finally, finally learned is this:

I was never broken.

You can’t repair what was never wrong.

You can only awaken.

Reclaim.

Rise.

I didn’t need fixing.

I needed truth.

And I live in it now

exactly as I am.

Reclaimed. Reawakened. Renewed.

*Thank you to The Unsealed for advancing my poem to the next round of voting! If you would like to help my poem advance, click on This Link, thank you!