Therapy Bits

This is written for the word of the day challenge, today the word was compensation.

Compensation – Word of the Day Challenge

They called it compensation—
a word too cold to hold
the heat of all I carried.
Still, it came. A sum. A sentence.
A check with my name
that tried to speak for silence.

Not enough to fix the fracture,
but more than nothing,
more than the hush money
they once hoped I’d choke on.

This time, it was justice
measured in currency—
not apology, not truth,
but something real enough
to touch.

I stared at it, trembling—
not from greed,
but from the ghost of the girl
who once had nothing,
not even the right
to say what was done.

And now, they paid me
for surviving
what should never
have happened.

I bought a door that locks.
I bought sleep in a quiet room.
I bought food that didn’t come
with fear at the table.

I bought time. Therapy.
Laughter, slowly.
Shoes that didn’t remind me
of running.

No sum could rebuild
the bones of my childhood,
but this—
this was proof.
That the world had bent,
even slightly, toward my truth.

I am not what was done to me.
I am what I have done
with the ruins.

And justice—
even when it arrives in envelopes
instead of handcuffs—
can feel like a kind of sunrise.

Bright. Late.
But mine.