A Logic She Cannot Borrow

She is ten, already suspicious of answers
They say poverty, a word sounding like weather
Like something that simply passes
But her parents did not disappear with the rain

They are alive; this fact sits in her chest
Like a chair no one is allowed to use
At the orphanage, names are shortened
Histories folded small enough to fit in files

She learns early; survival requires cooperation
Eat when told, smile when praised
Don’t ask questions that bend adults out of shape
Still the question grows, if poverty is the reason
Why does love not cost less?
Why’s absence explained, presence unaccounted for?

Therapy rooms try to soften her
Bright walls, gentle voices trained to slow her breathing
They ask her to draw feelings, give grief a color
To place it safely on paper

But her mind is not chaotic, precise
She does not cry because she is confused
She cries because the logic is incomplete
They tell her to accept; she hears – stop asking

At night she imagines her parents
Moving through ordinary days, existing
Without the weight of explaining her absence to them
This is not abandonment, they insist
Just circumstance, economics, life

But she knows, even at ten
That explanations which erase feeling
Are not explanations at all
So, she grows quiet, not healed
Not broken, just alert

She’s learned very early
That some wounds are not loud
And some children do not need fixing—
They need the truth
Spoken without flinching