Steven LaChance Blog

Why do you hurt me?
was the prayer I never said aloud.
It lived in my mouth like a dying bird,
fluttering, breaking its neck
on the cage of my molars.

You looked at me like
something ungrateful.
Something wild you forgot to tame.
I didn’t understand.
Not when I still thought
blood meant safety,
that family meant shelter
and not war dressed as tradition.

Later—
I saw it.
The plans behind your teeth.
The fear in your need to be higher
than someone like me.

You were always talking in mirrors,
saying “Come back and visit”
when you meant “Stay gone. Stay gone forever.”
Your invitations were knives wrapped in linen.
You knew what to say
to salt the wound and call it weather.

You whispered to the younger one
about me.
Fed him your version,
stitched from pride and fear and rot.
You made him believe
I was the thief,
the liar,
the selfish one —
and he held those stories
like gospel
while your lips stayed clean.

But the truth waits.
It peels paint.
And he will see —
that what he thought I said
was your voice
behind my name.
The loans.
The games.
The storm you poured into his ears
just to keep the room spinning.

But fine.
Let it be.
I’ve got shoulders wide enough
to carry the lies,
to lift the weight
of everything I didn’t do.

That’s how you survive people like you —
not with war,
but with absence.
You starve them of your rise,
your becoming,
your name spoken in triumph.

I dried myself from you.
Let the roots pull free.
Stepped out of the house
with my back straight,
and never looked
for the key again.

About the Poem:

What I Carried Was Never Mine, explores the weight of unspoken wounds within a family structure — the manipulation, the rewriting of truths, and the quiet strength it takes to walk away from roles you never agreed to play.

Written in a confessional style influenced by poets like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, the piece speaks to anyone who’s ever had to choose peace over proximity. It’s about reclaiming your voice, even when that voice was stolen, reshaped, or silenced for years.

This isn’t a poem of revenge. It’s a poem of release.