THE MIRROR THAT REMEMBERS

I searched for myself in borrowed names,

In echoes carved from others’ claims,

Wore faces like masks in a shifting parade,

Afraid to be still, afraid to fade.

Tried to be thunder, tried to be light,

A silhouette chasing the edge of night,

But silence whispered deeper truths,

That I was not absence, but uncouth roots.

In solitude, the noise grew clear,

My voice uncoiled from tangled fear,

Not perfect, not whole, not fully known,

But pulsing fiercely, all my own.

I am not what the world has made,

Nor what it feared I’d be or played,

I am the forge, the fire, the flaw,

The raw becoming of my law.

So, I walk now with open skin,

Not armor-bound, but growing in,

Each step a question, each breath a key

Unfolding endlessly into me.

© GrEaTnEsS 🦁