Dead Letters: The Mouth Full of Ash.

“A child does not wake up hating herself.

Someone teaches her.”

There are letters that smell like perfume.

Mine smell like old paper, candle smoke,

and the inside of a throat

those spent years swallowing its own scream.

I did not write these to heal.

I wrote them because the pain had nowhere else to go.

Because grief, when trapped too long,

begins scratching at the walls of the body

like something buried alive.

Dear “To the silence you left behind,”

I used to stand in front of mirrors

and negotiate with my own reflection.

One more pound.

One more rehearsal.

One more day without eating properly.

One more performance where I smiled so beautifully

no one noticed I was vanishing in real time.

I thought suffering had elegance to it.

That if I could become disciplined enough,

beautiful enough,

weightless enough

someone would finally love me

without hesitation in their eyes.

Do you understand how young I was

when I learned my body was a problem to solve?

How cruel it is

to hand a little girl a mirror

before you ever hand her safety?

I remember counting ribs

like rosary beads.

Remember cold hands.

Dizziness.

The strange pride that comes from surviving on almost nothing.

People praised me for shrinking.

That is the sickest part.

The smaller I became,

the more approval entered the room.

And I mistook that approval for love.

I danced until my feet bled into satin shoes.

Until my knees trembled under stage lights.

Until exhaustion became holy to me.

I wanted perfection so badly

I would have carved it from my own bones

if someone had handed me the knife.

And still

still

I could feel it in the way you looked at me.

That unbearable disappointment.

Like I had arrived in this world

slightly wrong.

Not tragic enough to mourn.

Not beautiful enough to protect.

Just… wrong.

So, I became apologetic for existing.

I apologized when I spoke too loudly.

When I cried.

When I needed comfort.

When I took up room at dinner tables.

When my sadness became visible.

I became the kind of woman

who says sorry before she says the truth.

And that damage followed me everywhere.

Into love that starved me emotionally

because starvation already felt familiar.

Into relationships where silence felt normal

because silence raised me.

Into nights where I laid beside people

who touched my body

without ever seeing me inside it.

Tell me

how was I supposed to know the difference

between love and survival

when survival was the first thing handed to me?

There are still parts of me

that flinch when someone is kind.

Still parts waiting for affection

to become conditional.

That kind of wound does not leave cleanly.

It nests.

Sometimes I hate how deeply I wanted to be chosen by you.

How I kept returning emotionally

to doors that never opened fully for me.

A child will crawl toward warmth

even if the fire burns her.

And I was still a child for so long.

But listen carefully now

because this is the part

where the letter stops bleeding

and starts becoming a blade.

I am done confusing pain with devotion.

Done believing I must earn love

through exhaustion, obedience, disappearance.

I am not holy because I suffered quietly.

I deserved tenderness

before I ever learned how to perform strength.

And maybe you could not give that.

Maybe you were wounded too.

Maybe love failed you long before it failed me.

But your pain

does not excuse the inheritance of mine.

I carry enough ghosts already.

I will not carry your absolution too.

So, I leave this letter here

among the ashes of every version of me

that begged to be enough for people

determined not to understand her.

And I grieve for her still.

The thin girl.

The exhausted dancer.

The woman who kept offering her heart

like a handwritten apology.

I grieve her

but I do not abandon her anymore.

I feed her now.

I let her rest.

I speak to her gently when the mirror turns cruel.

And slowly

slowly

she is beginning to believe

she was never difficult to love.

Only difficult to control.

—A.

She spent years starving for love before realizing she had been feeding everyone but herself.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di ’Stefano. All rights reserved.

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