RONDA LARUE
Ballad
Three Hidden Boards
Haunting, Reflective, Unsettling
7.02
Lyrics
Seventy years and news feed open
Another rich man saying no
Another row of older women
Carrying what young ones come to know
And suddenly I’m back in that classroom
My best friend’s father at the board
Sociology, human behavior
Why people hurt, hide, are adored
He smiled and said before the whole class
Like it was nothing strange to do
“Play the Rhapsody in Blue solo
And I’ll give an A to you.”
One day I walked in wearing white
Summer linen, buttoned true
He said,
“Do you know your nipples are showing?”
My body slunk, my face burned through
They always say she asked for it
They always say she wanted more
As if a girl of sixteen years
Knows what course charm is leading for
They always say she asked for it
Same worn trail through every town
A man steps over what he’s done
And leaves the girl try and set it down
Invited to a special storefront discussion
A paperback book about being Okay
Boys sent out walking for the pizza
Two girls told to lie and stay
One on one side, one on the other
“Tell me what you feel,” he said
His hand where no teacher’s fingers belong
While his talk theories filled my head
When the boys came through the doorway
We were sitting straight again
Back in class he called it learning
A way to understand the mind within
They always say she asked for it
They always say she knew the game
As if he didn’t build her silence
As if he didn’t plant the shame
They always say she asked for it
While power speaks in careful tones
A girl walks home with something heavy
No rightful place to set her own
So I bought a little wooden lock-house
Painted windows, roof pitched high
And down below the narrow foundation
Boards that opened puzzle-wise
First the one that looked like nothing
Then the second, and a third
Then the roof would lift beneath it
A box of shattered words
I put the guilt his handling made
Confusion I could not speak or explain
A child building secret chambers
For a grown man’s trespass and his shame
Years went by and I kept living
Still drawn toward the human mind
When one college psychology lecture
Left me shaking — I didn’t know why at the time
That’s how buried things survive you
Buried under a daily kept art
Till the same old lie comes knocking again
At the locker rooms of the heart
Now women are speaking in silver voices
Decades lining every word
And still the men sharing friends and power
Say the story’s nothing but absurd
Massage tables, courts, and classrooms
Different rooms but still the same
An older order keeps handing girls
The oldest lies used to blame
They always say she asked for it
They always say she went along
They never say how power teaches
Doubt in where a girl belongs
They always say she asked for it
Till one day sorrow tells the truth
[pause]
And an old hand lifts a wooden roof
And finds her hidden girl of youth
Here I am facing morning headlines
Seventy years, and a long trail laid
Three small boards inside me shifting
In the order they first were made
What I find is not a temptress
Not a girl who played a part
Just a young one taught to carry
A grown man’s trespass of her heart
Now I see the ancient trail for what it is
Through courts and schools and polished rooms
And I see myself at sixteen
Hidden inside that little house
Three small boards beneath the floor
Waiting for someone to name what he did
______
Copyright: Ronda LaRue 2026
Song Introduction
A song about psychological manipulation and abuse of trust from a person in a position of power, and the long delay between what happens to a girl and what she is finally able to understand, name, and carry differently decades later.
Instrumental / Production
Vocals and Instrumentals produced with Suno & GarageBand
Lyrics, Arrangements & Final Mix: Ronda LaRue
Editorial Territory
Abuse of Trust · Delayed Recognition · Survivor Memory · Shame · Institutional Silence · Public Reckoning. Psychological Manipulation ·
Theme Tags
female experience, healing, social truth, power, education, memory, abuse of power, psychological manipulation
Credits
© 2026 Ronda LaRue. All rights reserved.
Background / Story
Three Hidden Boards began with a memory from adoscence that had remained largely buried for many decades—an experience that I couldn't really absorb at the time so I hid it, minimized it, and left it buried inside an old lock house box with 3 secret boards to unlock it.
Years later, as more women have begun speaking about the long afterlife of coercion, shame, and abuse of trust by a man wielding uneven power, I found myself recalling the buried memories and returning to what the body remembers before the mind has language for it.
This song is not about a public case, but about the larger and painfully familiar pattern: how early violations of trust can shape a life, go underground for decades, and re-emerge in a cultural moment when private memory and public reckoning begin to meet.