I was raped Mama: A Metaphorical Cry for the the Death of Innocence and the Birth of Steel

 

By: Isaac Christopher Lubogo

 

On the day you left me, Mama, I was still a child. No, I was a baby—pure-hearted, sugar-souled, soft like freshly kneaded dough. You saw light in me. You smiled at my clumsy steps and whispered dreams into my ears when the world was quiet. I was your hope. I was your sunrise.

 

But Mama…

What have I become?

 

 

When you left, the world barged in.

 

It didn’t knock. It didn’t bring condolences. It brought knives. It brought bills. It brought whispers and shadows and closed doors. It brought truths no child should ever face alone. I waited for someone to cover me like you once did, to say, “It’s alright, little one.” But no voice came. No arm reached.

 

So, I stopped waiting.

 

And slowly, I became something else.

 

 

I don’t know when it happened exactly—maybe the day they mocked me in front of strangers, or the night I cried alone under the torn roof while the storm laughed louder than my sobs. Maybe it was when they threw your name at me like an insult:

“You think you’re special because you’re her child?”

Maybe that’s when I stopped trying to be special.

And started trying to survive.

 

Mama, they’ve changed me.

 

The softness you nurtured has dried.

The light you saw in my eyes has flickered.

I used to love freely—now I calculate.

I used to trust openly—now I scan for betrayal in every smile.

I used to be your warm-hearted child.

Now I am… armored.

 

 

And here is my greatest sorrow, Mama:

 

I’m afraid that I’m no longer the person you believed I would become.

 

That if you saw me now,

if you looked into my eyes today,

you would hesitate.

 

You would see the steel.

You would see the sharpness.

You would see the bitterness swimming beneath my calm.

And you would ask, “Who taught you this?”

 

And I would want to cry,

want to scream,

want to fall into your arms and say:

 

“I didn’t want to be this way. The world did this to me. The world turned me into something hard. I just wanted to survive. I’m sorry, Mama… I’m sorry I’m no longer soft.”

 

 

I carry your memory like a fragile glass in a world full of hammers.

And yet, I break before it can.

 

They told me grief makes you stronger.

But no one warned me it makes you colder too.

That it makes your laughter sound like strategy,

your kindness feel like risk.

 

 

 

And now I confess:

This hardness?

This calculated silence?

This distant gaze?

It is not who I am.

It is who I had to become—

Because the world would not allow your child to remain tender.

 

So blame them, Mama.

Blame the world that forged me in fire.

Blame the betrayals, the rejections, the way they looked at me like I was disposable once your light went out.

 

Because deep inside me, your child is still there—

Curled up, breathing, afraid,

begging to come home.

 

 

But for now, I wear this armor.

Because outside your love,

the world is not safe.

And your child… your innocent child…

learned to grow fangs just to stay alive.

 

 

To every soul hardened by sorrow, not by choice—this is your truth, and it does not make you less human. It makes you surviving poetry.

 

# Suigeneris