A poem I wrote around 20 years ago

Around 20 years ago I wrote this poem reflecting on the social hurt caused by my "friends" at the time. 

I now have 3 children of my own and am started to see familiar patterns emerging, and so felt like it might be an appropriate time to allow this one of mine to resurface, hoping to read it to my eldest's class next week as part of their poetry week.

If you've got the time to read it, and comment any kind words, I would greatly appreciate the feedback.

THE FALL

I remember the gravity first - 

the sudden, sharp betrayal of the tree,

and the way my knee opened like a secret I never intended to tell.

I looked away, not because of the blood, but because of the audience:

the ones who watched the wound and did nothing,

reading me raw, then hollowing me out with their silence.

They were eager for the next game,

leaving me to gather the pieces of “me” they no longer cared to see.

I walked home slow - a quiet pilgrimage - carrying a tale of woe I wasn’t ready to share.

I was looking for a shelter where the names they called me couldn’t breach the door.

For years to come, I hid the shame in the shade of that tree.

But the rain doesn’t just drown; it washes clean.

And that “feast of ignoring” that followed me became the very thing that fed my hunger to be real.

I took that small, shaking version of myself and replanted her in better soil.

I watched a new day emerge from the ache, trading the “nicknames” for names I chose:

Self-Aware. Stable. Brave.

Now, I am the shelter I once went searching for

I am the person who gives because she knows the cost of “not enough”.

I work to make the invisible feel valued, needed, seen and free.

This is the version of me I want my children - and you - to see:

not just the one who fell, but the one who used her scars to build a table where no one is ever ignored.