I went to work each morning ready for the day.
I smiled and did my job, then quietly slipped away.
No one knew my wardrobe, lived inside my little car,
or that each night I searched for somewhere safe but not too far.

I learned which roads were quiet, which car parks had a light,
which corners felt less frightening in the middle of the night.
I’d lock the doors around me, keys held tightly in my hand,
trying to find some safety in a life I hadn’t planned.

I wasn’t on a pavement. I wasn’t in a queue.
I didn’t fit the picture people thought homelessness looked like too.
I had a job, I worked, I smiled when people spoke,
while underneath that version of me, something slowly broke.

My family never knew it. My friends were unaware.
No one asked me where I slept because no one thought to care.
Not because they didn’t love me. Not because they turned away.
But I became so skilled at hiding what was happening each day.

Some nights, a passing footstep filled my body up with fear.
Some nights I barely slept at all. Just praying dawn was near.
A car became my bedroom, my shelter and my space.
The only door that I could lock, between danger and my face.

Abuse had made my world so small, though no one else could see
how much of every waking hour was spent trying to be free.
And still I turned up every day, dependable on time
while privately surviving something I could never quite define.

That girl was there in plain sight, yet somehow never seen.
Living two completely different lives with daylight in between.
She didn’t need the judgment on how she came to be.
She needed someone looking close enough to really see.

Because homelessness has many faces. Stories left untold.
It isn’t always doorways, sleeping rough out in the cold.
Sometimes it wears a uniform and smiles as if okay,
then searches for a safer place to park and hide away.

So when I see somebody now whose story I don’t know.
I remember there are hidden things that people never show.
For once, I was that woman carrying everything alone.
Working every day while having nowhere safe to call my home.

And maybe I felt invisible, but looking back, I see
the woman who kept going then is still a part of me.
She found a way through every night, however dark or long.
And though nobody saw her, she was there and she was strong.