They All Watched

She was not lost.
Not a girl gone missing.
Not a whisper swallowed by wind.
She was there—
visible,
tangible,
breathing.
And they chose to unsee her.

They marked her early—
too quiet, too pretty,
too much light where their shadows clung.
Jealousy is a slow acid.
It eats beauty bone by bone
and convinces itself it is justice.

They blamed her softness.
Her decency.
Her long-lashed eyes that made them feel
small and unspectacular.
She didn’t ask to be luminous.
They decided that was violence.

And so—
they answered with real violence.

They made her body
a blackboard of agony.
They scrawled their hatred
in welts and burns,
choked her screams with fists
and called it discipline.

But this—
this was never discipline.
This was ritual.
A grotesque theatre
with a single, bleeding star
and an audience of cowards
who refused to walk out.

They invited children to the torment.
Let them learn cruelty
before cursive.
Let them laugh
while she begged
for water,
for mercy,
for someone to grow a spine
and stop it.

But no one came.
No one said enough.
Not the neighbours.
Not the teachers.
Not the dozens of eyes
that blinked,
and blinked again,
but never saw her.

She was a girl
with a name,
a pulse,
a voice
they buried long before her body.

Do not call it neglect.
Do not soften what was done.
This was complicity.
This was evil.
And it happened with doors ajar,
with windows open,
with the whole world pretending
they didn’t hear.

She was not a secret.
She was a sacrifice.

And still—
she glowed.
Even as they stripped her of everything.
Even as they turned her into dust.
There was light.
And it shamed them.

There is no word
for what they did.
Only echoes.
Only absence.
Only a silence
thick with guilt
that still hasn’t spoken her name loud enough.

They all watched.
And not one of them was blind.

Keep My Words Alive

If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.