They see me with hands on the wheel,
feet steady on the gas,
a woman who conquers,
who builds,
who signs papers with a name they say will mean something.
They speak of my future like prophecy,
a business to run, a world to own.
They dress me in ambition,
in power,
in a suit that doesn’t fit my skin.
The woman I was meant to be.
She stirs sugar into coffee,
presses her lips to a child’s warm forehead,
sits by a window and watches rain make poetry of the streets
Yet their voices are so loud,
so certain,
that I cannot even whisper what I want.
So I nod, I smile,
I let them build this version of me,
one brick at a time,
until I am buried beneath it.
And maybe one day,
I will forget the woman I could have been,
the mother, the homemaker,
the quiet kind of happy
and only remember the one
they never let me become.