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.