You said I was almost something—
almost bright enough to keep,
almost soft enough to hold without flinching,
almost normal enough to introduce to daylight.
“Neat,”
like a sticker placed on a cracked notebook,
like something temporary,
like something you peel off when the edges curl.
And then—
like a door slamming in a house I thought I lived in—
you named me something smaller.
Something that lives in corners,
something you apologize for noticing.
I replay that moment
like a song stuck between stations,
all static and almost-melody,
wondering which version of me you saw first.
The one trying too hard to be funny?
The one memorizing your favorite colors
like they were survival instructions?
The one shrinking so you wouldn’t feel crowded?
You said friends don’t mean a thing,
and I wondered
if that meant I was nothing,
or if it meant you were already gone
before I even arrived.
Because I would have been your friend.
I would have been the person
who sits on the floor with you at 2 a.m.
counting ceiling cracks
like constellations that never got named.
But I think
you only liked me
when I was quiet enough
to fit inside your idea of harmless.
Now it’s left up to me—
to carry the echo of your voice
like loose change in my pocket,
to decide if I was ever
as wrong as you made me feel.
I walk home through streets
that don’t know what you called me,
and the sky doesn’t either,
and the wind doesn’t ask me to explain myself.
Maybe that’s the cruelest part—
the world keeps spinning
like I was never reduced to a word,
like I was never measured
and found inconvenient.
So I will leave it up to me.
To be loud when I laugh.
To take up space in doorways.
To believe that being seen
shouldn’t feel like being accused.
And if I am strange,
if I am too much,
if I am the wrong kind of unforgettable—
then I will be that
without apology,
without shrinking,
without waiting for someone
to decide if I am safe to love.
Because I am still here.
Still breathing.
Still learning how to hold my own heart
without asking permission.
And maybe one day
someone will call me “neat”
like they mean
rare
instead of
temporary.