My name is Jane Doe,
and I learned too young that silence has a pulse.
It thumps in the throat, it bruises the air,
it teaches you how to fold yourself into something
small enough to survive the night.
I did not choose this name
it was handed to me the moment someone decided
my body was theirs to trespass.
A name for the unnamed,
for the girls who disappear inside themselves
because speaking feels like stepping back into the fire.
I carry memories that shake
even when my hands look still.
I carry nights that never end,
questions that never had answers,
and a childhood that was rewritten by someone else’s violence.
My name is Jane Doe,
because the world prefers me faceless
it’s easier that way.
Easier to ignore the trembling, the aftermath,
the way a soul limps long after the body looks healed.
But I am not a headline, not a case file,
not a whisper people avoid
because it makes them uncomfortable.
I am a survivor with a voice that learned to rise even when it cracked.
My name is Jane Doe,
but I am not anonymous anymore.
I speak for the ones still gathering courage,
for the ones who only breathe in fragments,
for the ones who haven’t yet remembered
that their story is still theirs.
I survived what tried to erase me.
I survived what tried to rename me.
And today I say my name out loud,
not because it is simple,
but because it is mine.
-This Puzzled Life
