I asked you to protect her,

but instead, you put a sword in her hand.

Sharp edge against skin like she needed to

know the weight of steel before she knew the weight of her own bones.

She never needed to learn the sound

of a blade slicing air,

the way blood smells when it’s warm,

how breathless a scream can be when it’s yours.

No one told me her laughter would be cut short,

traded for a clenched jaw,

for the silence that creeps in the spaces between her words.

She used to talk about stars,

now she’s memorized the names of the dead

like they were planets she’d never visit.

You call it training,

but I call it watching her skin stretch

too tight over her ribs,

watching her carry the ghosts of battles

that weren’t hers to fight.

There’s a darkness in her eyes now—

a shadow that wasn't there when she was just 16,

when she still wore hoodies two sizes too big,

doodling broken hearts on her sneakers

instead of carving them out of her chest.

She holds her own now, you say,

but did she ever need to?

You act like survival is victory,

like we didn’t lose her the minute she picked up that shield,

like she didn’t trade her softness for armor

she never asked to wear.

You gave her strength,

but at what cost?

Who taught her how to cry with her fists clenched?

Who told her the only way to be safe

was to be hard, to be sharp, to be cold?

You think you saved her,

but all I see is a girl who forgot

how to be soft

because the world convinced her

softness wasn’t safe.