What Should Have Been

 
What Should Have Been is a deeply emotional spoken word piece that mourns the life, safety, and justice that never came.
 
This piece moves through the space between expectation and reality—the gap where trust was broken, where protection failed, and where something sacred was taken instead of honored. It gives voice to the quiet grief of imagining a different outcome… one where boundaries were respected, where systems worked, where harm never happened.
 
Each line carries both sorrow and clarity.
Not confusion—clarity.
 
It names what should have been:
safety, dignity, accountability, care.
 
And in doing so, it refuses the narratives that minimize, excuse, or rewrite the truth.
 
Rooted in lived experience, What Should Have Been is not just about loss—it is about recognition. It is about allowing the truth to stand without distortion, without apology, and without being silenced.
 
This piece is for every moment that should have been different.
For every version of the story that was never allowed to exist.
For every survivor who knows exactly where the line was crossed.
 
Because naming what should have been…
is how truth begins to take its place.