A World to Call My Own

You want the truth? Then look at me—this orphan, this disgrace— And tell me, what would you become with no one to embrace? They drew a line, I crossed it—yes, I trespassed and I stole, But who decides the boundary for a child without a soul? Before I knew what shame could weigh or what a promise meant, I learned to hold a burning thing—that’s where my story went. I didn’t start with smoke and ash; I started with a taste For something I could hold and burn before I went to waste. I stole the first one from a man who never knew my face, A bitter warmth to fill my lungs and give my hands a place. I learned to light it in the wind, to cup the fragile flame, A ritual that promised calm but only brought the same. The smoke would curl like questions I had stopped expecting truth, A slow and steady burning of the remnant of my youth. I let the smoke become my clock, a way to mark the hours, A slow destruction I controlled when I had lost my powers. But long before the smoke could settle, there was darker night— A hand that came with lessons taught not in what’s wrong or right. The matron’s hand was swift and hard, a lesson taught by fist, And every prayer I whispered then was one the heavens missed. They cornered me beside the stair, a lesson in the dare, And no one came to pull me out, to say it wasn’t fair. They left their marks where no one looks, taught me to bruise and hide, But scars became a secret map of wars I held inside. I found a kind of company in sharpness of a blade, The only thing that felt like truth before the colours fade. Inside my mind I built a world that touched the open sky, A place where no one knew my name and I could learn to fly. I’d borrow sunsets from my thoughts to keep the fading light, And walk through fields of made-up peace when darkness fell like night. I stitched a universe from threads of ribbon, dust, and dark, And in its center lit a tiny, stubborn, glowing spark. I’d whisper stories to myself to drift the hurt away, Those dreams became the only home that ever let me stay. I thought I’d live inside my head and let the real world hide— But something in my blood said: “There’s a life beyond this side.” I slipped out past the iron gate when no one was awake, A runaway before the dawn, for my own freedom’s sake. I took the road with empty hands, my feet began to hurt, I slept beneath a bridge that night, my blanket was the dirt. I tried to beg, I tried to steal, I slept out in the rain, But every street I walked upon just led me back to pain. I stood again before the gate, the same I swore to leave, An orphan walking back inside with nothing to believe. I learned to earn the smallest crust, the bitter cost of bread, And slept in shadows, curled and still, with nothing but my head. The world has taught me how to shiver, how to feel the cold, It made me wise in ugly ways before my heart grew old. The world I know is made of grey, a city carved from stone, It wore me down until I felt the marrow of my bone. I stitched the patches on my coat to face another year, A quiet soldier in a war where no one volunteers to care. An orphan wears a borrowed coat, a name that doesn’t fit, A half‑remembered lullaby they taught me to forget. An orphan learns to read the room, to shrink and know their place, To never show the hunger that is written on their face. An orphan asks the empty sky a question every day: “Who leaves a child to stand alone and tells them not to pray?” The world said orphan like a verdict, fitting me so small, I pressed my back against the cold and learned to be my own brick wall. No roots, no name, no door to claim—just orphan as my ground, But from that hollow I became the one I never found. So if you ask what made me hard, what carved me from the stone – It’s this: I built my own two hands a world to call my own.