Fractured Mind Collection

I wore the dress you always liked,

the one you chose.

Did my hair,

carefully the way you preferred it.

Put on the shoes you asked me to wear,

even though they hurt my feet.

By the time I was finished, I

looked exactly how you wanted me to.

I looked in the mirror

and hated what I saw.

Something shifted…

I felt my blood itching in my veins,

my skin prickling with a thousand pins and needles.

My throat was dry,

rough as old cardboard,

every breath scraping on the way down.

My mind ached beyond reason,

beyond understanding.

I felt myself regurgitating my own feelings.

Old emotions resurfaced without warning,

dragged from the depths where I buried them.

My heart felt like lead,

crushed in the hand of my own despair.

I felt it in the tightening of my chest,

in the trembling beneath my skin,

and in the shadows gathering at the edge of my thoughts.

Fuck…

Something’s coming.

🖤 © Natasha C. Akinfolarin 2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

14/6/26

My veins burn hot like living fire,

Dragging back memories I can’t quiet or tire.

I put on makeup, hide the cracks,

Pretend I’m whole while confidence lacks.

I feel the pounding inside my chest,

A constant ache that steals my rest.

It tugs and grips, it claws my back,

Pulling me down when my strength starts to crack.

My load is heavy, my pain immense,

Wearing me down with no defence.

The baggage I carry won’t set me free,

It follows wherever life takes me.

I smile and laugh, I play my part,

While old wounds linger inside my heart.

Some scars may fade, some fears may pass,

But shadows of yesterday still hold me fast.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

2025/26

It was the betrayals hidden inside it,

The cruelties disguised as lessons,

The apologies that arrived

Just in time to keep me staying.

One lie became a hairline fracture.

One humiliation became another crack.

One apology became a crude splint.

One cycle later, the bone broke again.

At first the damage barely showed,

A little ache.

A little tenderness.

A slight hesitation when I reached for you.

“Nothing worth worrying about,” you said.

“You know I love you, right?”

So I trusted the diagnosis

Of the person holding the hammer.

Each break followed the same familiar pattern.

You shattered me,

Then handed me the broken pieces

And called them beautiful.

You became both the injury and the cure,

Until I no longer knew which one hurt more.

The fractures spread through trust,

Through confidence,

Through the parts of me

That once stood tall.

Every cruel word opened another wound.

Every silent treatment wore me thinner.

Every accusation drove the hurt deeper,

And each time I healed,

I healed crooked.

Bent around your version of events.

Bent around your excuses.

Bent around the lie

That love was supposed to hurt this much.

By the end I wasn’t one clean break.

I was a thousand fractures

Wearing human skin.

A skeleton held together

By scar tissue,

Survival,

And stubborn hope.

People wondered

Why I doubted myself,

Why I flinched at kindness.

They couldn’t see the wounds

Beneath the surface.

Couldn’t see the X-rays.

Couldn’t see the years spent rebuilding

What you kept breaking.

Fuck…

You demolished me slowly,

One fracture at a time,

And called it love.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

03/06/26

The bars were forged from rejection,

Cold iron shaped by pain,

Each memory locked around me

Like another heavy chain.

It locked the gates

With memories of people leaving,

Then hid away the key,

While whispering in the darkness,

“This is where you’ll always be.”

Then it sat beside me

In the shadows and the gloom,

Telling lie after lie

Inside that cold, silent room.

It told me nobody was coming

And that I’d been forgotten too.

It told me the silence outside my cell

Proved nobody cared what I was going through.

Loneliness took silence

And called it abandonment.

It took distance

And called it rejection,

Then whispered those lies so often

They started sounding true.

Day after day

It repeated the same old mantra,

Until the lies it fed me

Started sounding like my own voice too.

The cruellest lie

Was making me believe

I belonged there,

When the prison

Was never really home.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

03/06/26

It starts quietly —

A comment about your clothes:

“That makes you look fat.”

A sigh when you laugh too loudly:

“It wasn’t that funny.”

A question about who keeps texting you:

“You seeing someone else?”

Then suddenly

You’re explaining yourself

For existing.

You shrink little by little,

Eventually trading freedom for peace,

Mistaking control

For care.

Your world grows smaller.

Friends disappear.

Dreams get packed away

Like winter coats on a rainy day.

You no longer have permission

To wear what you want —

Permission!?

And the cruelest part?

They call it love.

They say it’s protection,

Say nobody understands you

The way they do.

Meanwhile

You lose your voice so slowly,

You almost don’t notice.

The silence replacing it, until one day

You look in the mirror

And realise

You’ve become a stranger

Inside your own life.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

26/05/26

Not a place you go to willingly

A place you fall into,

Slow at first

Then all at once

One drink,

One hit,

One more.

Just to take the edge off,

Until there’s no edge left.

No feeling left,

Just… nothing.

Faces blur,

Names don’t stay.

Nights roll into mornings,

And I stop caring which is which.

I don’t cry here,

I don’t scream.

I don’t feel enough,

To do either.

Everyone here looks the same.

Not in faces,

In the eyes,

Empty.

But still searching for the next fix.

The next drink,

The next way,

To not be here.

While still breathing.

We don’t talk about it,

We don’t have to.

That quiet nod,

Like yeah… you too.

I don’t feel,

I don’t think,

I don’t remember.

Because if you do it all comes back.

And that’s the one thing,

We’re all trying to kill.

This isn’t living,

It’s waiting.

Waiting to not feel,

Waiting to disappear.

Waiting for something,

To finish what we started.

And the worst part is,

It gets easy

This place.

It don’t chain you down,

It softens you.

Until you don’t fight anymore.

Until leaving,

Feels harder,

Than staying numb.

Some people…

They don’t fucking leave,

They just fade

Into it.

Like they were never really here,

To begin with…

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

 27/04/26

But somewhere between your need and my silence,

Something shifted in a way I didn’t see coming.

You started reaching for something,

Not really me,

But what I gave you.

The way I stayed without question,

The way I listened without judgement.

The way I made you feel like you mattered,

Without ever asking for anything back.

That’s where it began,

Not love,

Not anything soft

Or mutual,

But something heavier,

Something one-sided.

You didn’t want me,

Not fully,

Not in truth.

You wanted the fix,

The relief,

The quiet.

The calm I gave you when your head got loud,

The space where you didn’t have to pretend.

The version of yourself that only showed up

When you were with me.

And I became it without noticing,

Slipping into a role I never chose.

Your habit,

Your escape,

Your silence.

Something you reached for when you needed grounding,

And let go of the moment you felt full again.

You came close when it suited you,

Pulled away when it didn’t.

I stayed right where you left me,

Steady,

Open,

Waiting without saying it out loud.

I told myself being needed meant being chosen,

That if you came back it had to mean something.

But needing and choosing are not the same thing,

And I learned that far too slowly.

You weren’t holding on to me,

You were holding on to what I gave you.

And when you had enough,

You let go without ever really losing anything.

And me, I stayed —

God, I stayed —

Constant in the background,

Offering something real.

You fed on it,

Quietly,

Repeatedly,

And called it love

While I fucking stood there believing it was.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

04/05/26

A spectre slithers just out of reach,

While the fire rages in my head,

Fog descending fast as reality slips.

I slide between moments, coming and going,

Watching which side of me will win.

The world is burning and it looks divine,

Fireworks lighting up my dopamine —

Better than any drug.

This is my peace, or something like it.

I was not made for soft things

Or sticky-sweet lies.

Vomit rises in my throat

As two personalities fight to be heard,

No reasoning, no rational thought —

Just need, just impulse.

The thrill of losing control strikes suddenly,

A match dragged hard across my vision,

Terrifying, impossible to ignore.

My pulse pounds loud in my ears,

Sweaty palms slick with something I can’t hold,

My heart hammering against bone,

Blood dripping from fingernails

Dug too deep into my hands.

My head buzzes, loud, electric,

Until gravity loosens its grip

And I am no longer held —

Just… adrift.

Electricity leaps through my body,

The thought of chaos relaying

Through every nerve I own.

Moments like these feel more real

Than the meds ever did.

Everything around me claws for attention,

Burrowing deep into my ear canal,

Crawling under my skin

Until I feel like I could break free of myself,

Shed a hundred skins

Over and over again.

The compulsion is too strong to quiet,

My mind ticking in slow motion,

Buzzing to a tune of its own —

Fuck… it’s started again.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

1/5/26

Wolves don’t rush.

They wait.

They learn the ground

Before they move.

They don’t hunt from anger —

Only instinct.

And I have that now.

I used to trust too easily,

Mistook noise for truth,

Stayed when I should have left.

The wolf saw it all.

She said nothing.

Just remembered —

Oh, she remembers.

She lives in me —

Quiet,

Contained,

Waiting patiently,

Awake.

My protector.

My witness.

My memory

That holds it all accountable.

I don’t react anymore.

I assess.

Distance.

Energy.

Intent.

Because wolves don’t chase

What isn’t worth it.

And they don’t return

To what nearly killed them.

They fight —

Something colder,

Something learned.

So if you feel me go still —

That’s not weakness.

That’s my wolf

Deciding

What the fuck you are.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

15/4/26

A room full of monsters and eyes,

Where truth was buried in lies,

Where silence kept you alive,

And scanning room, helped you survive.

I learned how to read every space,

Who carried threat in their face,

Who smiled but sharpened their teeth,

Who hid their intent underneath.

My eyes never stayed in one place,

I trained every flicker of face,

No fear, no crack, no reveal,

Just locking away what was real.

I schooled every breath, every move,

Gave them nothing to use or to prove,

Because if they saw through the mask,

They’d twist it — their predatory hold would last.

Nothing soft could stay safe,

It left you open, exposed, displaced,

So I buried it deep inside,

Where even I learned to hide.

But something stayed quietly awake,

A part of me they couldn’t take,

It watched as I faded from view,

Learning to split into two.

One version survived every night,

Silent, controlled, out of sight,

The other still trapped in that room,

Small, and expecting the gloom.

And that’s how I made it through,

Not soft, not safe, not true,

But sharp in a world that confined,

A child who sharpened her mind.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

21/04/2026

No click,

No warning,

No moment I could point to

And say

That’s when I got stuck on you.

It was softer than that.

A look,

A word,

Just enough connection

To create hope,

The way you stayed

Just long enough

To feel like I mattered.

And now I’m here —

Not held,

Not loved,

Not free.

Just… stuck loving you.

My mind knows the exit,

Maps it out in logic,

Replays the reasons

I should leave.

But my heart —

It won’t listen.

It still reacts to you.

Like you’re home,

Like you’re safe,

Like you didn’t break the lock

And leave me inside it.

You live in reflex,

In habit,

In the quiet spaces

I can’t clear out.

I try to move on —

Fuck I try —

But every step forward

Pulls something tight

Around my ribs.

Like I’m dragging you with me

Whether I want to or not.

This isn’t love anymore.

It’s attachment with teeth.

Memory with a grip.

A door that only opens

From your side.

And you’re gone —

And you took the key.

So I stay —

Locked in

To a love

That doesn’t even

Know I’m still here.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

15/04/26

It sits in the hand of its creator,

A witness between steady fingers

While the world pretends nothing happened,

While truth waits to be dragged into light.

It is a memory holder,

Soaking up the things my mouth once couldn’t say,

Catching the words that lodged in my throat,

Holding them until I am strong enough to look at them.

Relentless in its honesty,

It scratches what the body swallows whole.

It carves what the chest keeps buried

And writes where pain once stayed unspoken.

The quill is my blade

In my fight against isolation.

And here’s the part no one sees —

A quill only writes when the body carries too much.

Pressure makes the poetry.

Pain makes the language.

Weight makes the mark.

No pressure — no story.

No wound — no ink.

No silence — no reason to bleed.

So when I write, don’t call it talent.

Call it survival shaped into sentences.

Call it a feather forced hard enough

To leave proof that the poet feels deeply.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

02/03/26

With echoes,

With versions of me

I don’t recognise anymore.

Thoughts don’t come gently,

They crash,

Overlap,

Fight to be heard

Until I can’t hear anything at all.

One part of me is healing,

Another is still bleeding,

And neither knows

Which one gets to speak.

I replay things

I should have buried,

Rewrite conversations

That already broke me.

I live in “what ifs”

And “why did I…”

Like they hold answers

Instead of chains.

Some days

It’s HEAVY MENTAL

So loud

I can’t breathe properly inside myself.

Other days

It’s worse —

Silent.

Because silence

Is where the truth sits,

Waiting

For me to look at it.

This is my headspace —

Messy,

Heavy,

Unforgiving…

And still,

Somewhere inside it,

I’m trying to find a place

That feels like something

I can fucking cope with…

…if only for a moment…

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

22/3/26

I was still learning

The shape of you,

Still memorising

The weight of your name

In my mouth.

There were parts of you

I hadn’t reached yet,

Corners of your heart

I was still trying to understand.

I had more to give —

More patience,

More softness,

More of me

That I hadn’t even met yet.

The vulnerable parts

You made me feel safe enough

To show you.

But love doesn’t wait

For readiness, does it?

It leaves

Mid-sentence,

Mid-touch,

Mid-becoming.

And now I’m here

Holding all this love

With nowhere to put it,

Learning

How to fold it back into myself

Without breaking.

No one tells you

What to do

With love that’s too big

For a life without you.

Because I wasn’t finished loving you —

And maybe

That’s the cruellest part of all.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

21/3/26

I was trauma-sized,

My worth defined

By silent scars

Carved in my mind.

They made me smaller,

But not erased,

Their cruel marks

Without grace.

But still I rise,

My voice, my proof,

A broken heart

That knows the truth.

I am more than

The fucking box,

Their chains, their cage —

Their carefully built lies.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin 2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

Words stack up in my throat.

I don’t hate people.

I just can’t hold them right now.

My social batteries are low,

And every question pulls at me.

Every reply costs something inside

That I don’t have to spare.

Silence feels kinder.

Rooms feel safer

When no one expects anything.

I need my own space

The way lungs need air.

Not forever.

Just long enough

To recharge

Without guilt.

I just need to do me

Right now.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

27/12/25

This year tried to kill me.

Not once —

Twice.

And I don’t say that lightly.

There were moments

My body waved the white flags

Before my mind was ready.

Moments where breathing

Felt optional,

And tomorrow felt like a luxury.

Somehow, I stayed.

I had to let go of people

Who shared my blood

But not my safety.

Family I kept forgiving

Until forgiveness

Started costing me my life.

Walking away hurt.

Staying would have hurt more.

Grief came with it —

But so did peace.

And I’m realising,

I’m learning,

Those two things

Can live in the same room.

Somewhere in the wreckage,

My poetry stopped whispering.

It stood up.

Spoke clearly.

Stopped apologising.

I stopped trying

To sound like someone else.

Stopped shrinking lines

To make people comfortable.

2025 broke me open.

Not to destroy me —

But to finally let me out.

I am finally fucking ME.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin 2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

31/12/25

No clean slate,

Just me doing my best,

The same body

Carrying last year In its bones.

People talk about fresh starts,

Like pain resets at midnight

— mine doesn’t.

I won’t wake up healed,

I wake breathing,

That feels like enough today.

I am not optimistic but

I am honest.

If I move forward,

It will be slow.

And if I stumble,

I won’t apologise.

This year doesn’t owe me miracles.

I don’t owe it perfection.

I’ll stay,

Some days I’ll rest,

Some days I’ll be a mess.

But fuck —

At least I won’t pretend.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

22/12/25

I’m there,

But I’m not.

They called me freak

Like it’s a curse,

But I’ve worn worse names

And stitched them into my skin.

I’m the unpredictable they can’t predict,

The fire that won’t obey.

Their world scratches,

Their rules rot on me —

I was never made to fit.

I’m not broken,

Just wired different,

Built for storms

They’ll never understand.

So yeah,

Call me freak.

I wear that word in gold on my chest —

Watch them choke on fucking normal.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025

#DislexicPoet

5/11/25

I don’t live —

I exist between breaths,

Between hope and collapse,

Between who I am

And who I pretend to be.

There’s no night,

No day —

Just hours filled with grey,

No light,

No sway.

I don’t fall.

I don’t rise.

I hover.

Where feeling goes quiet,

Where nothing hurts

Because nothing reaches me.

Illusion,

Living in constant

Self-loathing

And confusion.

I didn’t die —

I just stopped fucking arriving.

I’m having a moment.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

02/10/2026

I didn’t fall apart all at once.

It was slow,

Quiet,

Piece by piece.

A belief here, a promise there —

The version of me that tried too hard

To survive.

I lost things I thought were mine —

People, certainty,

The future I had rehearsed in my head.

And when it was all gone,

There was no grand speech,

No phoenix moment.

Just silence.

Just me…

Sitting in the wreckage

With nothing left to protect.

That’s when I saw it —

Under the fear,

Under the shame,

Under the habit of shrinking.

There was something …

Still breathing

In the marrow of who I was.

Not the old me,

Not the pleasing one,

Not the one who endured everything quietly.

Something stripped,

Something unapologetic,

Something unfinished.

And it was in that moment I realised

Sometimes losing it all

Is how we are reborn.

I am who I am now.

Not prettier.

Not softer.

Just fucking truer.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

 #DislexicPoet

16/2/26

I can’t hide.

Do you see the smoke

Swirl around my belly,

When my legs feel unsteady

And my balance slips away.

Do you see my heart

Beating too fast,

My breathing shallow,

My throat dry —

The tears waiting

Behind my eyes.

I stand here,

Breathing,

Present,

But not always held together.

I speak,

But my voice feels thin,

Like it might fall through the gaps

Before it reaches hope.

I’m split between

What I feel

And what I’m allowed to show.

So tell me,

When you look at me,

Do you really see me,

Or just the parts

That are easy to fucking see?

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#Dislexicpoet

2026

They smile while turning the blade,

Call it love, call it care,

Leave you bleeding,

Your heart in pieces laid bare.

Home became a courtroom,

And I was always on trial,

No comfort there,

Just cold, hard calculated denial.

The ones who raised me

Forgot to protect me,

Let the nightmare

Become my reality.

They didn’t think I knew what they did —

Even God wouldn’t forgive their sins.

I learned family doesn’t always mean safe,

It can be a minefield,

Always learning your fucking place.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

11/12/25

They don’t see the nights

I scream into my pillow,

Or the small things

That rise like hills.

I hold it together,

Learned how to pretend,

Smiling through darkness,

Through pain with no end.

Would they still call me pretty

If they saw what’s inside?

Would they still call me lovely

If they saw the cracks,

The ugly scars I hide?

I wear a mask

To hide what’s inside,

Painting over stories

I can’t give away.

My broken pieces

Don’t make a sound,

A diary written

Where no help can be found.

I hold it together,

Skilled at the lie,

Smiling through darkness

With truth locked inside.

If they saw the shaking,

Felt what I feel,

Would they still stay

Or run from what’s real?

I am more than the surface,

More than my skin,

But loving me means

Loving within.

They call me pretty.

They love the view.

But they never see

What I live through.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

2025-1/1/26

Fractured Mind Collection

Deep in my chest

My calm has already left,

Its departure

Leaving an ache.

I tell myself

This is needed,

This is the only way I cope.

Yet I know this song,

Well rehearsed

From childhood.

Somewhere way back

I understood my role,

My function

In the family I call mine.

My lips turn up into a smile,

Getting ready

To fucking pretend.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

21/11/25

Lights too loud,

Voices overlapping,

Laughter moving fast

Without asking permission.

I don’t know where to stand,

Where to put my hands.

I keep checking my face

To see if I look normal.

Everyone seems trained for this,

Like they were given instructions

I never received.

Small talk feels like a test

I didn’t study for.

Eye contact lasts too long

Or not long enough.

I laugh a second too late,

Nod at the wrong moments,

Replay every word

As if it matters more than it should.

I want to leave

But I don’t want to be rude.

I want to stay

But my body

Is already running.

I know how to surf the net,

Scroll my way through

Insta, FB, TikTok, etc.

Online —

Time pauses.

Mistakes are reversible.

Silence isn’t awkward.

I decide when I exist

And when I don’t.

Here,

I can delete.

Edit.

Paste and copy,

Without restraint.

But out here —

No script.

No warning.

Just the wild.

Too loud.

Too much.

Sensory overload.

This is the wild

They call social interaction,

And my body has frozen.

Where nothing is chasing me,

Yet everything feels like it fucking is.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

2025-19/1/26

 If I told them

What I really feel,

They’d call it a sin,

Like anger is evil,

Like survival is a crime.

 

Is it so wrong

To want to burn it all down

When something inside you

Suddenly

Ignites?

 

This heat isn’t new.

It’s old.

It learned to protect me

When nothing else did.

 

When it rises,

It’s fast —

Jaw tight,

Hands shaking,

Heart pounding like war drums.

 

You want to scream.

You want the hurt to stop.

And they look at you

Like you’re too much,

Like you’re the danger.

 

But they never saw

How long you’ve held it in,

How many times you swallowed it,

How many nights

You stayed quiet.

 

All the times

You chose silence

Over destruction,

Held your tongue

Until it bled.

 

They only see

The smoke —

Not the years

You kept the fire

Contained.

 

You are not mad or bad.

You are someone

Who survived,

Who could have burned it down

And chose not to.

 

And the fact that you don’t

Burn everything down

Every time it rises,

Every time it roars —

That’s fucking strength.

 🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶
#DislexicPoet

14/2/26

Too quiet,

Too loud,

Too far away.

It’s like the world

Is passing through water.

There are no thoughts,

Just weight.

Something presses down on me

From the inside,

From the outside,

From everywhere at once.

Everything feels alien,

Wrong,

Unfamiliar.

My hands don’t feel like mine.

My voice sounds borrowed.

The room looks staged,

Like a bad copy

Of something that should be mine.

I’m here, but not really here.

I exist

Behind glass,

Behind mist,

Inside a body that feels heavier

Than it should.

My body is crying,

Even when my eyes can’t

I’m not panicking,

I’m not calm.

I’m just

Not real enough

To touch the fucking world back.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

13/12/25

The kind that tastes like rejection.

The kind you choke on

And think you might die,

Because speaking

Never felt safe.

I survived

With a mouth stitched shut

By fear

And old memories

That refused to rest.

I learned early

That pain behaves better

When you pretend

You can’t feel it.

I survived

By shrinking,

By swallowing screams

Until they settled

Like boulders inside my chest.

People saw calm —

Never how much it cost me.

They saw a girl

Standing still

While something inside her

Broke again and again.

It took years to drag myself

Out of the quiet

That tried

To fucking bury me alive.

Silence

Is an invisible cage.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

07/10/2025

Every sin

Still warm on your skin,

Still reaching for me

In the dark,

Setting off something

Under the hurt.

You left your secrets

In my bed,

Pressed into the mattress

Like confessions you never meant to keep,

And for once

My shoulders soften.

I’ll love you

Just for tonight,

Not because it’s safe

But because my pulse

Needs the honesty.

Let the spell take

Just for now,

Let the magic blur the truth.

Until the ache loosens,

Its grip on my chest.

When I’m broken

You don’t fix me —

You hold the pieces

So I don’t have to,

Steadying the shake

I pretend isn’t there.

You keep me believing

On days belief feels like a lie,

I tell myself to survive,

When my breath forgets

Its rhythm.

Sometimes

I don’t know

Up from down,

Sight from sound,

Or where I end

And the world begins —

Only the surge,

Then the drop.

Black mascara tears fall away,

As we close the door.

And sink into the abyss of forgetting.

Tonight

You anchor me

To something real,

Slow my breathing,

And for a moment

I touch the world back.

🖤 © Natasha C. Akinfolarin 2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

2025

No door to unpick.

Just rules I learned too young,

Silence dressed as safety,

Stillness mistaken for love.

I follow my thoughts going around in circles,

Count the cracks in the walls of my mind,

Serve time for crimes I didn’t commit.

Every emotion gets questioned.

Every need put on trial.

I am both the jailer

And the one begging to be heard.

The walls aren’t stone,

They’re memory.

They’re fear that learned my name

And refuses to forget it.

Sometimes I press my ear to myself,

Listening for proof

That freedom still exists.

It does.

It whispers.

But I don’t have the courage

To step out of my own head.

Not yet.

Fuck — not yet.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

19/1/26

A water nymph —

Quiet,

Unseen,

Learning survival before beauty.

The water kept me hidden.

Heavy.

Cold.

Safe enough to stay alive,

But never enough to live.

I watched the light

From below,

Never touching it,

Only learning its existence

Through shadows.

Then something in me shifted.

Not hope —

Instinct.

My body knew

Before my mind did

That staying small

Was another kind of death.

The breaking hurt.

Skin split.

Breath changed.

The past clung tight.

As I pulled myself,

Out of what I knew.

I did not rise gently.

I tore myself free.

Now I am winged.

Not untouched —

But lighter.

A dragonfly,

Made from water and wounds,

Proof that transformation

Is not pretty —

It is earned.

I am not who I was.

I am what survived

The fucking breaking of becoming.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

20/01/26

Never the one they picked,

When teams were chosen.

And names were called

Like they mattered.

I learned the ache of waiting early,

The taste of being last.

The silence that settles,

When no one looks my way.

I didn’t win prizes.

I didn’t get applause.

I learned how to stand still

And swallow it.

But when something broke,

They found me.

When chaos needed calming,

When mess needed fixing,

When blame needed somewhere to land —

There I was,

Suddenly useful.

Not wanted.

Just accessible.

I carried problems

That were never mine to hold.

I learned how to fix things

Without being fixed myself.

I became the strong one

By necessity,

Not choice.

They didn’t see me —

But they leaned on me.

They didn’t lift me up,

Because I was never fucking enough. 

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin 2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

20/12/25

Doubt sits as the general,

Gleaming bright,

Medals of anticipation

And deception sit on my chest.

“What ifs,”

“maybes,”

“should I, could I” —

They stand proud as captains of the fight.

They all line up,

Ready on parade,

Ready for orders,

My nervous system fried to the bone.

The battlefield is a disaster,

With scars so deep they’ll never fade —

No power,

No sway.

I bleed inwardly

With the consequences of loss

And decay,

My mind exhausted,

My body weak with the noise.

There’s no respite,

No reprieve.

And tomorrow I’ll fight —

I’ll fight all over again.

🖤 © NCarolAkinfolarin2025 🪶

#DislexicPoet

23/02/26

I have seen the abyss

And swam its black hole,

Letting the darkness eat me whole,

Until nothing familiar remained.

My wings were cut early

To make me compliant,

To keep me small,

Never letting me stand tall.

I learned survival before I learned choice,

Learned silence before language,

Learned how to bend

Before I reached my full potential.

Now I stand at the threshold of emancipation,

Everything I was taught being stripped from me,

Beliefs falling away

Like skin that no longer fits.

This is not collapse —

This is transformation in motion.

For the first time in my life

I am without fear or restraint.

Not because the world is safe,

But because I am no longer owned by it.

I draw myself closer, not shrinking back,

But stepping fully into what I was meant to be.

From birth my evolution was already in motion.

No words were spoken, yet the knowing was known.

Carried in the body,

Long before the mind caught up.

I was always moving toward this moment,

Even when I didn’t know its name.

I no longer fear my demons,

For they are a part of me

As the light is a part of me.

I stop fighting what shaped me,

And start owning what it forged.

Through what I survived,

My true self is finally fucking revealed.

🖤 © Natasha C. Akinfolarin 2026 🪶

#DislexicPoet

1/2/26