I have died a thousand times.


In the silence of rooms where I learned to make myself smaller.
In the hands of men who only held me in the dark.
In the mirror, where I spent years trying to love something I was taught to hate.


I have buried myself in the spaces between other people’s comfort.
Lowered my voice so they wouldn’t flinch.
Made my body easy to leave so no one had to carry the weight of me.


I have been a funeral no one attended.


And yet—
I wake up.
Every day, I wake up.


Breathe in. Breathe out.
Move through a world that never made space for me,
but take up space anyway.


I am not supposed to be here.
I was supposed to break,
supposed to fold,
supposed to be a name they only whispered in past tense.


But here I am.
A mouth that still speaks.
A body that still moves.
A breath that still fills the room.


I have died a thousand times.
And still—


I am here.


And ain’t that something?