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Ka'Angelo Simpson 19 yo
It was quiet in the house on Grove Street. Not the good kind of quiet. The heavy kind—the kind that hangs over everything like smoke that never clears.
Ka'Angelo was 19. Her hair was thick and coiled tightly into a puff that bounced when she walked, though no one saw her smile anymore. She had once wanted to be a writer. Her notebooks were full of poems from when she was 12—before things got worse.
People in the neighborhood said the Simpsons family was respectable. They went to church every Sunday. Her father, a deacon. Her mother, the head of the choir. No one knew what happened behind the white door with the chipping paint. No one knew how loud the silence was inside.
At seven, Ka'Angelo learned to keep her voice low and her footsteps lighter than air. At nine, she stopped inviting friends over after one of them saw her father's shadow in the hallway and ran. At twelve, she started wearing long sleeves no matter the weather. By sixteen, she had begun to forget what it felt like to be touched without recoiling.
No teacher ever looked too long. No auntie ever asked too much. And every time she hinted at the pain, someone said, "But your parents love you."
That love left her with bruises shaped like belt buckles. That love left her alone in her room for days. That love told her it was her fault, even when she cried.
She ran away once. Slept under a bridge until a patrol car picked her up. She begged the officer not to bring her home, but he said, "You'll be safe now." He didn't know what safe meant to her. He never asked.
She started hearing voices around seventeen. They whispered at first. Told her to hide. Told her to fight. Told her, one day, it would end.
On her 19th birthday, Ka'Angelo sat at the kitchen table. Her father asked why she wasn't smiling. Her mother told her to be grateful.
That night, the whispers in her mind grew louder. Screaming. Shouting. A thunder of all the things she had swallowed for a decade. She didn't remember picking up the knife. She only remembered silence—true silence—afterward.
The trial was short. The judge called her "unstable." The news called her "disturbed." No one called her a survivor.
She sat now in a psychiatric unit, the walls white and sterile, her arms wrapped in bandages and memories. A therapist named Dr. Lane visited her each morning. He never asked her to relive what happened. He only said, "I'm sorry. That wasn't your fault."
She cried the first time someone believed her.
And for the first time in years, she began to write again.
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Hayyy , this is my first book let me know how y'all feel so far
