the silence she swallowed whole

By Isabella George

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Honorable Mention in the Barbie Dream Gap x Girls Write Now: Inspiring Women Writing Contest (Age 13-18 Category)

In the beginning, there was silence—thick and looming, a darkness that pressed against her skin, murdering her thoughts. She felt herself spill out into fractures, a vessel waiting for a voice she didn’t know how to carry. Too many voices spoke, all at once, from ancestors somewhere deep within her home, each one rising like a tide, crashing against the shell she clung to for safety. And she, a quiet girl in a loud world, learned to listen before she could scream.

At first, she could only hear the noise of others. Voices that painted her small and careful, that told her to sit with her hands folded while the world passed judgment. They gave her words without teeth, bitter syllables that bit their own tongues, echoing lessons on how to stay silent, to keep the candles of expectation burning long after the flames had waned.

But somewhere, she knew there was more. Something deeper, hidden in the cracks between what they taught her to be and what she dared to become. The voice of resistance read like scripture in her bones. It hurt, but she let it hurt, feeling it shift and change, calling her down into the depths of herself, where her power lay coiled, waiting.

She found the pieces of herself scattered, like shards of glass glinting in the dark. Love, life, hope—fragments cast away by hands that never understood their worth. She collected them, her fingers bleeding as they brushed against the sharp edges, the blood mingling with the dust. With every wound, she felt her voice grow stronger, as if the pain fed something within her, something ancient and unbreakable. She gathered herself, piece by fractured piece, until she could feel the weight of who she was, no longer silenced.

“O, my ancestors, bold and silenced, unbound and buried,” she whispered to the shadows, to the ghosts that drifted through her veins. “When did your voice last breathe across fields, unrestrained and free? Did you shout your defiance into that screaming void, only to hear it vanish? Or did you, too, gather these broken shards—love, life, hope—all remnants thrown aside, and carry them into the dark?”

And there, in the silence she once feared, she discovered her first taste of power. A voice, her voice, began to form—not in whispers, but in sharp, clear tones that cracked through the quiet. Her ancestors’ words swirled around her like a second skin, and for the first time, she was not afraid. The power within her was real, pulsing, wild.

Then came the rain, cold and relentless, stinging her skin like a thousand tiny needles. It bruised her anew, and she wanted to scream, to shout until her voice tore free from her throat and shattered the sky. But she held her silence, letting the rain fall. Each drop left a mark, a memory, a reminder of what she had been, what she had endured, as if the heavens, in their fury, mourn with her, in whispered sorrow. Still, she wondered—when will the shouts turn to peace, or fade into the silence they crave?

She raised her hands, trembling yet steady, and let the rain carve its path along her arms, her cheeks, her lips. She tasted the salt of her resilience, felt it seep into her blood, thickening her pulse with the memory of every fight she’d ever won. She knew now—her voice was not the silent whisper they’d tried to make it. It was a storm, waiting to break.

And so she began to scream.

From the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, she poured herself out, a torrent of sound that shook the very air, that turned walls to rubble and shadows to dust. She screamed for the girl she had been, the one they’d tried to bury in silence. She screamed for every time she’d been told to quiet down, to fold her hands and look pretty while the world carried on. She screamed until her voice was raw, until it was nothing but a hoarse whisper scraping against the walls of the world.

But even then, her voice persisted. The rage that painted her vision red burned brighter, fiercer, until it was a fire that consumed everything in its path. She felt herself rise, no longer bound by the weight of their words, by the hands that had tried to shape her into something small. She was everywhere, her voice a song that echoed through every shadowed corner, filling the silence with something fierce and alive.

And as her voice rose, steady and unyielding, it carved itself into the world’s bones. She was not only the child of ancestors long forgotten, but the mother of dreams yet to come, her words a legacy that pulsed with life.

She had found her power, her voice woven from the fragments of all she had been, of all she had lost. And now, it was hers to wield, a weapon forged in fire and tempered by silence. She was no longer the girl waiting for permission to speak; she was the woman who would be heard.

When the rain finally ceased, and the last echoes of her scream faded into the night, she stood alone in the quiet aftermath, in the center of a world now changed. The air felt different, lighter, as if her voice had swept the shadows clean. She looked to the sky, her spirit rekindled, her heart blazing like the remnants of stars left behind. She could feel it—the strength she’d called upon, the fire she’d sparked. It was a power that had always been hers, waiting to be unleashed. As the silence settled, she knew that this power, her own voice, would carry her forward—no longer hidden, no longer restrained.

In her voice, the world trembled. And for the first time, it listened.

Isabella George

Isabella George is currently a high school senior from Illinois. She is a logophile and has a love for writing dark fiction and poetry. Isabella has many writing projects that she is working on currently; however, one is a YA fantasy novel that she can’t wait to share with the world. When not writing, you can find her reading anything and everything, listening to music, or contemplating life.