I misheard your emotions, I misheard your needs,
I misheard my own heart, now regret counts the beats.
I misheard your plans and acted like I didn’t care,
Now that I’m without you, your absence is all I hear.

There’s an outfit for each kind of day,
one for work, and one to play.
One for silence, one for charm —
I dress to keep their peace from harm.

I match their tone, their pace, their cue,
become the me they’re walking through.
A shifting shape, a face that fits —
but never quite the one that sits.

I dress in layers not for style,
but just to wear a safer smile.
A thousand looks, a thousand designs —
but none align with what’s in mine.

And every mirror looked back at me
But none of them knew who to be
I learned to read the room so well,
I lost the voice I used to tell.

But fabric wears, and so did I,
the cost of always living shy.
I’ve worn their sizes, played their part —
let fashion hide a restless heart.
But now I pull the stitching tight —
and walk in clothes that finally fit right.

I didn’t want to fall apart mid-sentence,
So I said less and asked more questions.
Tuned out love songs, skipped our street —
I made avoiding you look complete.

I smile and nod when your name is mentioned,
As if it doesn't pull me out of the conversation
They throw it around casually, like it's not cutting right through —
I guess I never got to cry out about you.

There once was a child with too many things—
a box full of buttons, a bird made of strings,
a hat that belonged to a father now gone,
a watch that still ticked but the hour was wrong.

She carried them all in a bag on her back,
each item a whisper, a worry, a crack.
No room for a coat, no space for a friend—
just memories packed without start, without end.

A pebble from rivers she never walked near,
a note with no sender, a name she held dear.
She lugged it through summers and staggered through snow,
refusing to leave what had once helped her grow.

One day she met someone who carried no sack.
He smiled and said, “You could put some things back.”
She frowned and said, “But these are my keeps.”
He nodded and asked, “And which ones still speak?”

She opened the bag and began to let go—
a feather, a fork, a torn shadow of woe.
Not all, but a few. Just enough to stand tall.
Her back learned to breathe, and she started to fall—

into walking, not dragging. Into days made of now.
The road felt like song. She forgot the old how.
She still kept a key and a small silver bell—
but she learned not all stories are hers to retell.

There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.