On the Outside of My Own Life©️ 𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 💔by Felina Silver (Copyright 2025)

I stand outside my own life,
pressing my face to the glass,
watching rooms I once built
fill with voices that no longer call my name.

There is nothing lonelier
than being a matriarch with no seat at the table,
a mother made into a guest,
invited only in memory.

My children say they are grown now𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪
that they must run their own lives.
I understand this.
I raised them to walk away without fear.

But independence is not permission
to silence me,
to rearrange my place,
to speak over the woman who gave them words.

They do not get to erase me.
They do not get to take my voice
and call it progress.

Being left out is a quiet cruelty💔
no shouting, no slammed doors,
just absence where love used to sit.

Isolation is not strength.
It is lonely, unnecessary pain,
and no one should cry more than they laugh,
should grieve more than they smile.

Sadness should not consume a woman
who carried life,
who gave everything required
for others to become themselves.

I am still here.
I am still worthy of being seen.
I am not finished simply because
they have begun.