File Number Child

By Charisse Smith

--

They wrote my childhood

in ink and folders.

Case numbers.

Reports.

Evaluations.

A file thicker

than the years I had lived.

To them

I was documentation.

To me

I was a child

watching strangers

decide my future.

They studied my family

like a problem to solve.

But they never wrote down

my strength.

They never recorded

how survival

grows quietly

inside a child

who refuses to disappear.

They gave me a number.

But I became a voice.

---

Author Bio:

Charisse Smith is a writer whose work explores survival, faith, and resilience shaped by experiences in foster care, systemic hardship, and surviving breast cancer. As a mother, student, and advocate, she writes about perseverance, justice, and healing through adversity. Now completing multiple college degrees, her work reflects the strength of the human spirit and the power of faith to rise beyond life’s storms.