Sweetdanger

I didn’t walk out of fire clean —

I walked out marked.

Life didn’t hand me strength,

it built it under bruises,

carved it behind every slammed door,

every night I cried too hard to breathe.

I call it survival.

The world calls it attitude.

Either way, I’m still standing.

I’ve been told I’m “hard” —

but I remember the girl I used to be.

Fifteen, mad and running,

searching for light that didn’t burn.

He found me. Older.

Promised I could stop running.

For a while, I believed him.

I was a wife,

a mother of three,

a dreamer holding hope with shaky hands.

Thought happiness was steady,

‘til the bottle whispered louder than love.

I’ve lost babies, lost myself,

buried pieces of my heart so deep

only God knows where they sleep.

I fell down hard —

and nobody came to lift me.

So I learned to lift myself.

Don’t call it courage.

Call it necessity.

My mama once said I’d be nothing

but a nasty street whore.

Her voice still haunts me sometimes —

sharp, cold,

but she never understood:

I was fighting not to become the pain she gave me.

Born into money, raised by misery.

The joke of it still makes me laugh —

a bitter kind of funny.

I’d trade silk sheets for peace any day.

I’m sixty-three now.

I don’t pretend I’ve healed —

some wounds don’t close,

they just learn to breathe.

Writing’s my confession,

my therapy,

my battle cry.

I don’t need pity.

I need you to listen.

To feel it.

To see the woman behind the scars.

Sweet as cherry pie, they say.

Sure — sometimes.

But cross me, and you’ll meet Pennywise.

I keep both inside me —

honey and venom.

Soft and steel.

Because that’s what surviving does —

it makes you your own weapon.

So here I am —

older, louder, unashamed.

Crying and laughing through the same breath,

telling my truth because silence never saved me.

Life didn’t break me.

It molded me,

hammered me,

burned me clean.

I am Dawna.

And this —

this is my story

Broken open.

Still shining.

Still hungry for more.

Sweetdanger is what they call me.