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The Dirt Room
It wasn’t a bedroom. It was a dirt-floored storage room under the house. No lights. No windows. Just blackness so thick it pressed against her skin like a second body.
The walls were damp. The air was still. And the ground beneath her was cold, uneven earth. The kind that clung to her skin, got in her nails, and never really washed away.
This was where they sent her. Where they came for her. Where silence became a shield and stillness became survival. No one asked. No one checked. Or maybe they knew and chose to look away.
She learned to breathe quietly. To listen for footsteps above. To brace when the door creaked open. And to disappear when it closed again.
The dark didn’t scare her anymore. It was safer than people.
Years passed. She left the house, but the dirt came with her. It followed her in memories, in nightmares, in the way she sometimes curled into herself without knowing why. She never called it “childhood.” She never called it “home.”
But she was still here. Still breathing.
One day, she stood barefoot in her own room. Light poured through the window. The floor was solid beneath her. And she whispered, “That was real. And I survived.”
No one rescued her. She rescued herself.
She doesn’t owe anyone her story. But if she tells it, it will not be for pity. It will be for truth. For the girl who slept on dirt in the dark and made it out anyway.
