I used to flinch at the sound of that name.
Arielle.
Not just because it wasn’t mine anymore. The name carried a lot. That name was a suit of skin I never chose, sewn with expectations I never fit into. People loved her, or thought they did. She was sweet, she was obedient, she was the smile in photos that made everyone else comfortable. But she was also quiet because she had to be. She hid everything—grief, anger, queerness, gender—deep enough that even she forgot how much was buried.
That name.
Arielle was the name in my dad’s voice when he needed someone to blame. The name on cards from my mom when she didn’t know how to see me. It was the name teachers praised. Pastors prayed over it. Strangers misgendered it. Sisters protected the name even when I didn’t know how to protect myself. It was all sharp edges and a mask I wore so long it felt like skin.
I’m not her. I never was.
Still, I won’t pretend she didn’t exist. Arielle got me here. She survived what I shouldn’t have had to. She wrote poems in secret, carved hope into notebook margins, and stayed alive when everything said not to. She was the ghost I outgrew, the beginning of me.
There were days Arielle felt like a shadow dragging behind me. I was always a step out of reach, but never gone. I wrestled with her silence. Struggled with the parts of myself I was afraid to look at. Then hid the truth behind a name that wasn’t mine. But with every poem I wrote, every truth I told, I felt her loosen her grip. Not because I abandoned her, but because I learned to carry her differently.
Axton writes to walk her home.
Now, when I write, I don’t write to erase her. I write to hold her hand and walk her home.
This is why I write. Not for closure, but connection.
Not to silence Arielle, but to let her rest.
And in her place, I stand. Alive. Whole. Still writing.
Every word is a step forward. Every poem, reclaiming. Every breath, a nod to the person I was always underneath it all.
links Beta/ Arc Readers & St Teams A Poem
